The pieces here span reflections on personal and collective identity, on literature, language and politics, and on Achebe's lifelong attempt to reclaim the definition of 'Africa' for its own authorship. For the first thirty years of his life, before Nigeria's independence in 1960, Achebe was officially defined as a 'British Protected Person'.
This book is a vivid, ironic and delicately nuanced portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria.