If you are in Nigeria, you would notice today’s Google doodle celebrating Flora Nwapa’s 86th birthday.
Flora Nwapa (full name – Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa) was a Nigerian Igbo author who has been called the mother of modern African literature. Born in Oguta, in south-eastern Nigeria on the 13th of January 1931 , she was the eldest of the six children of Christopher Ijeoma (an agent with the United Africa Companthy) and Martha Nwapa, a teacher of drama.
She is the first African woman novelist to be published in the English language in Britain and to achieve international recognition. Her first novel, Efuru, was published in 1966 by Heinemann Educational Books.
Nwapa also is known for her governmental work in reconstruction after the Biafran War. In particular she worked with orphans and refugees who were displaced during the war. Further she worked as a publisher of African literature and promoted women in African society. She was one of the first African women publishers when she founded Tana Press in the 1970s.
Flora Nwapa died from pneumonia on 16 October 1993 in hospital in Enugu, Nigeria, at the age of 62
