Life Turns Man Up and Down: Money and Girls Turn Man Up and Down

52 pp., letterpress on commercial stock, saddle stapled in stiff printed wrappers. Near fine. Saddle stapled illus wrappers. [2796]

Prior to the Nigerian Civil War, Onitsha Market in southeastern Nigeria was one of the largest open-air trading centers in West Africa, where merchants, farmers, and travelers from across the region converged with foreigners and traders. Beginning in the late 1940s, bookstalls within the market offered imaginative and colorful pamphlet literature, printed locally in English. The genre, which is widely referred to today as Onitsha Market Literature, flourished for about two decades, until the market was destroyed in 1968 during the civil war period. This particular item, "Life Turns Man Up and Down," credited to 'The Strong Man of the Pen' (identified as Sunday Okenwa Olisah by Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas) is also notable for providing the title to Kurt Thometz's edited anthology of Onitsha Market Literature, Life Turns Man Up and Down: Highlife, Useful Advice & Mad English (Pantheon, 2001). The variant on offer here appears to be different from the example held by Spencer Research Library, with yellow versus blue wrappers and differing illustrations. Fresh examples of the format are very rare.