AFRICA WRITES BACK, the African Writers Series & the launch of African literature

318pp., illus., paperback, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 2008

ISBN: 9781868144723

First published in Oxford in 2008.

Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, the novel which provided the impetus for the foundation of the paperback Heinemann African Writers Series in 1962, with Chinua Achebe as Editorial Adviser.

The book focuses on the first 25 years and draws extensively on correspondence with the authors.

"A fascinating and highly entertaining book. Rich in anecdotal material on many of Africa's best known writers, the book offers a narrative how the now famous series came together." Hans M. Zell

“[The book] is full of the drama of that enterprise, the drama of dealing with the mother house, the drama of dealing with the often intractable political constraints dominating the intellectual space across Africa, and not least of all dealing with the writers themselves—with their ambitions, their temperaments, their financial needs and, at times, their perception of a colonial relationship between themselves and a European publishing house.” Clive Wake, Emeritus Professor of Modern Languages, University of Kent at Canterbury

James Currey was the editorial director at Heinemann Educational Books in charge of the African Writers Series from 1967 to 1984, when he went on to found James Currey publishers. He is the recipient of the African Literary Association’s 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award.