In the city of Nsukka, in Nigeria’s increasingly restive southeast, there is a street just south of the University of Nigeria’s campus named Marguerite Cartwright Avenue. The late Nigerian intellectual Chinua Achebe once lived on this avenue, as did influential Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It is in Nsukka that one finds the intersection of their lives—and the intersection of past and present in Nigeria’s struggle over Biafra.
Biafra, officially the Republic of Biafra, was a secessionist state in southeastern Nigeria that existed from 1967 to 1970. The desire for an independent Biafra has stirred again in Nigeria.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, one of the authors shortlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, holds her book "Americanah," ahead of the awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London on June 4, 2014. AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth
