Jagua Nana

London: Hutchinson, 1961. Very Good/Very Good. London: Hutchinson, 1961. First Edition. Octavo (22cm); illustrated dust jacket by Dorothy Brooks; orange cloth boards with black lettering and decoration; 192pp. Price-clipped jacket shows a few brief tears at folds and chipping at spine ends, with brief fading to spine and foxing to verso. Boards lightly bumped at corners and spine ends. Ownership inscription of a Rosemary Murray to front pastedown. Several pages dog-eared at bottom corner. Binding sound and pages unmarked. Very Good.

Published the year following Nigerian Independence, the titular character of Jagua Nana is an ageing sex worker described by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her retrospective of Ekwensi's work as someone, "whose exaggerated sexuality is of the brassy, chain-smoking, body- baring sort." Ekwensi is sometime accused of relying on stereotypes and caricature in his work, but Adichie, while conceding the point, notes that Ekwensi also stands out for showing the world through women's eyes, and moreover portraying them as sexual initators, something that was uncommon in, as she puts it, "the testosterone-fuelled political and cultural scene of 1960s Nigeria." Jagua Nana was republished in 1975 as part of Heinemann's African Writer Series, and remains one of Ekwensi's most popular works.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. "Sex in the City." The Guardian: Friday, February 1, 2008.