June 17, 2008, is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart by Heinemann. This publication provided the impetus for the foundation of the African Writers Series in 1962 with Chinua Achebe as the editorial adviser.
"Africa Writes Back: The African Writer's Series & the Launch of African Literature" captures the energy of literary publishing in a new and undefined field. Portraits of the leading characters and the many consultants and readers providing reports and advice to new and established writers make "Africa Writes Back "a stand-out book. James Currey's voice and insights are an added bonus.

Reviews

"[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