[Explores] the great mystery that it addresses: how on earth did this sort of 'political' school produce 'such a number of renowned writers in one generation'[?]...Highly recommended.
MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW
This is an eminently readable book...Ochiagha is a clear and capable writer... Achebe and Friends certainly adds to our understanding of how a group of 1940s Nigerians ... Read moreschoolboys acquired the intellectual education which was a necessary precursor to the extraordinary literature that five of them went on to produce.
LUCAS BULLETIN
Offers compelling insights into the development of Nigeria's most celebrated writers, and provides a much-needed account of how their education at Umuahia contributed to their success.
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Proof that education has the power to change the world can be found in the story told in this groundbreaking book.
TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT
Groundbreaking on many fronts. Not only is it 'the first in-depth scholarly study of the literary awakening of the young intellectuals who became known as Nigeria's 'first-generation' writers in the post-colonial period'; it also, subtly, proposes a new framework for receiving and interrogating the works of said writers.
TORCH
A major study....this book is a new perspective on British colonial education in Nigeria and the development of Nigeria's modern literature, especially in the way the writers' visions were shaped to re-inscribe African literature.
AFRICA BOOK LINK
Focusing on the emergence of an African elite at Government College Umuahia and their turn to literature as a mode of self-expression, Terri Ochiagha's Achebe and Friends answers one of the outstanding questions in African literary history: Why did the most important group of pioneer writers emerge from one institution in Eastern Nigeria in the last decades of colonial rule? Ochiagha combines the archival skills of a cultural historian with the sensibilities of a literary critic to produce perhaps one of the most important commentaries on African literature in recent years. This is a remarkable book on the origins of African literature and an unmatched model of how to do the literary history of the postcolonial world.
SIMON GIKANDI, Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University Show Less