Overview
Cyprian Ekwensi was a novelist and pharmacist whose fiction took the Nigerian city as its subject. He was Igbo, born at Minna in what is now Niger State, with family roots at Nkwelle in Anambra.
Biography
Ekwensi trained in forestry and then in pharmacy, in Nigeria, Ghana and London, and worked as a teacher, pharmacist and broadcaster. He began publishing serial fiction and pamphlets in the 1940s, including When Love Whispers and the folk-tale collection Ikolo the Wrestler.
People of the City appeared in 1954 and is often described as the first Nigerian novel in English to reach a wide international readership. Jagua Nana, published in 1961, followed a woman moving through the nightlife and politics of Lagos, and was both popular and controversial. Burning Grass drew on Fulani cattle-herding life in the north, and An African Night's Entertainment and Drummer Boy were written for younger readers. He worked in government information and broadcasting, served the Biafran side in information roles during the civil war, and continued writing and publishing until late in his life.
Notable achievements
- Published People of the City in 1954, an early Nigerian novel of urban life in English
- Wrote Jagua Nana, Burning Grass and An African Night's Entertainment
- Worked as a pharmacist, broadcaster and government information officer alongside his fiction
- Wrote extensively for young readers, including Drummer Boy
Legacy
Ekwensi is remembered for writing about the city — traders, drivers, nightclubs, hustling — at a time when much Nigerian fiction was set in villages, and for a plain popular style that reached readers outside literary circles.