One of the greatest African novelists of the post colonial era, Elechi Amadi of Nigeria has passed on to eternal glory.
His family reported that he passed away yesterday Wednesday at the Good Heart hospital in Port Harcourt in Rivers State at the age of 82.
Amadi's first published work is "Penitence". It was published by The Horn of the University of Ibadan edited by his fellow student, John Pepper Clark in 1957.
Prof.Clark and the first black Nobel Laureate in literature, Prof. Wole Soyinka are now the last of the literary titans who studied at the great University of Ibadan. The others were the famous novelist Chinua Achebe and legendary poet Christopher Okigbo of blessed memory.
Elechi Amadi became famous with his first novel The Concubine published in 1966.
~ The New Statesman.
"'Mr Amadi writes with speed and shapeliness and exhilaration... a lovely and dignified picture of a society not only still ruled by gods, but governed by a great delicacy in human relationships.'"
~ The Guardian.
The novel was followed by The Great Ponds in 1969. His personal account of the Nigerian civil war Sunset in Biafra published in 1973 was an international bestseller. His novel The Slave published in 1978 completed his historical trilogy with The Concubine and The Great Ponds.
His other popular works include the plays, "Isiburu" (1973), "Pepper Soup and the Road to Ibadan" (1977), "Dancer of Johannesburg" (1978), "The Woman of Calabar" (2002}, Collected Plays (2004, Edited by Seiyifa Koroye) and his novel "Estrangement" (1986).
Elechi Amadi was born in 1934 in Aluu near Port Harcourt in Eastern Nigeria. At University College, Ibadan he took a degree in physics and mathematics. After a period of land surveying and teaching he enlisted in the Nigerian Army. He left the army finally to work for the Rivers State Government, where he headed the Ministry of Education.
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