Thread by @englishpen

OK so we’ve been watching and listening again to #ChimamandaNgoziAdichie’s #PENPinter Prize Speech, and we thought we would post a short thread listing all the authors she quoted in the address.

If you haven’t read these authors yet, why not ask your local bookshop to source the books for you? #PENPinter #ChimamandaNgoziAdichie

1. ARROW OF GOD by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
#PENPinter #ChimamandaNgoziAdichie

2. Es’kia Mphahlele (South Africa).

Chimamanda cited in the context of writers creating short stories because of the ‘urgency of their political condition.’ His autobiography DOWN SECOND AVENUE was widely translated and was banned in South Africa during apartheid.
#PENPinter

3. A NERVOUS CONDITION by Tsitsi Dangaremgba (Zimbabwe).
#PENPinter #ChimamandaNgoziAdichie

4. Unsurprisingly, Chimamanda cited Harold Pinter during her #PENPinter lecture! The quote “a vast tapestry of lies upon which we feed” is from his Nobel Prize acceptance lecture
nobelprize.org/prizes/literat…

5. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also cited fellow Nigerian author Flora Nwapa, and her rejection of the label ‘feminist’ despite writing “wonderful, witty fiction about women in a world dominated by men”. Her first novel was EFURU (1966).
#PENPinter #ChimamandaNgoziAdichie

6. Rebecca West: “... people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” That’s from ‘Mr. Chesterton in Hysterics’ (The Clarion, Nov 1913) and is re-published in THE YOUNG REBECCA: WRITINGS OF REBECCA WEST
#PENPinter

7. THE DARK CHILD by Camara Laye (Guinea)
#PENPinter #ChimamandaNgoziAdichie

8. Finally, Chimamanda quoted Bessie Head (South Africa), whose first novel was WHEN RAIN CLOUDS GATHER (1968). #PENPinter #ChimamandaNgoziAdichie

8A. Bessie Head’s wonderful quote “I am building a stairway to the stars, I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me”
was first published in LIBÉRATION in 1985. You can read the English translation online here jstor.org/stable/40238920

That concludes the round up of authors mentioned during Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s #PENPinter speech. If you are minded to read some of these recommendations, why not support your local bookshop by ordering through them?