Okike: An African Journal of New Writing was founded by Chinua Achebe at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1971 — in the immediate aftermath of the Biafran War, as a deliberate act of cultural reconstruction. The name, from the Igbo word for creation, announced its intent.
The journal became the principal platform through which a post-war generation of Nigerian writers found their voices. The early issues were produced in very small print runs during conditions of extreme resource scarcity in post-war eastern Nigeria. They are vanishingly rare in institutional collections worldwide.
The OlongoAfrica Library holds six numbers: 1 and 2 from the Nsukka years, and 4, 5, 7 and 10 from the period when Achebe edited the journal from Amherst, Massachusetts. Number 4 (December 1973) is the first to carry the American address; Number 10 (May 1976) announces the return to Nsukka. Between them the two issues bracket the journal’s four-year exile.
