THE CONCUBINE

307pp., paperback, Reprint, Black Star Books & Head of Zeus, London, (1966) 2024

ISBN: 9781035906079

Novel set in a village in pre-colonial Eastern Nigeria. Any man beautiful Ihuoma falls in love with mysteriously dies.

"Mr Amadi writes with speed and shapeliness and exhilaration ... a lovely and dignified picture of a society not only still ruled by gods, but governed by a great delicacy in human relationships." The Guardian

"A highly sophisticated, measured treatment of the fatal loves of a woman in an Eastern Nigerian village. Written in a grave and simple style, it reveals its author as a fine writer ruminating on a past already turning into legend." The New Statesman

Elechi Amadi (1934-2016) was born in in Aluu near Port Harcourt in Eastern Nigeria. He is the author of the trilogy of novels, The Concubine, The Great Ponds and The Slave; a civil war diary, Sunset in Biafra;  Isiburu, a verse play, and the non-fiction work Ethics in Nigerian Culture.