Sunday, August 22, 2010

Onaedo - The Blacksmiths Daughter

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Onaedo - The Blacksmith's daughter is the first novel by Ngozi Achebe. If you’re a fan of the style of Chinua Achebe, who happens to be Ngozi's uncle, this book will not disappoint. The main story is that of Onaedo, a young teenager of Igbo ethnicity, in the time before the English colonialists made our geographic space a country called Nigeria. The novel is engaging and swift-paced but also manages to be serious and moving.

Synopsis from the publishers

Onaedo - The Blacksmith's daughter is a work of fiction and the tale of two women separated by four hundred years of history. Maxine, a modern American woman who is half-white and half-African comes across a set of diaries written by a slave in the 16th century and tries to write a book about it. She uses elements of the discovered diaries in her book and also information she has discovered herself based on ancient stories retold to her by a collaborator.