{"product_id":"there-was-a-country-a-personal-history-of-biafra","title":"There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the legendary author of Things Fall Apart comes a longawaited memoir about coming of age with a fragile new nation  then watching it torn asunder in a tragic civil war  The defining experience of Chinua Achebes life was the Nigerian civil war  also known as the Biafran War  of 19671970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people  Chinua Achebes people  many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. By then  Chinua Achebe was already a world-renowned novelist  with a young family to protect. He took the Biafran side in the conflict and served his government as a roving cultural ambassador  from which vantage he absorbed the wars full horror. Immediately after  Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States  and for more than forty years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years  addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Now  decades in the making  comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africas most fateful events  from a writer whose words and courage have left an enduring stamp on world literature.  Achebe masterfully relates his experience  bothas he lived it and how he has come to understand it. He begins his story with Nigerias birth pangs and the story of his own upbringing as a man and as a writer so that we might come to understand the countrys promise  which turned to horror when the hot winds of hatred began to stir. To read There Was a Country is to be powerfully reminded that artists have a particular obligation  especially during a time of war. All writers  Achebe argues  should be committed writersthey should speak for their history  their beliefs  and their people.  Marrying history and memoir  poetry and prose  There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection. Wise  humane  and authoritative  it will stand as definitive and reinforce Achebes place as one of the most vital literary and moral voices of our age.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44946416566325,"sku":"ByrdShop_1594204829","price":33.46,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781594204821.jpg?v=1769947738","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/there-was-a-country-a-personal-history-of-biafra","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}