The true first edition, published in London by Andrew Dakers Limited in 1954 — eight years before Heinemann reissued it as number five in the African Writers Series. The Library holds that later paperback too, in the African Writers Series collection; this is the book it came from.
The jacket copy describes Ekwensi as one of the first West African writers ever to be published, and sets the novel in an unnamed town of the West African seaboard, following Amusa Sango, a dance-band musician and writer who leaves the Eastern Greens for the city. It is among the earliest novels to treat West African urban life as a subject in its own right.
Dedicated to West African Voices, a BBC programme, with a West African proverb as epigraph. Set in 12pt Bembo and printed by the Ditchling Press in Sussex. The final leaf advertises Dakers’ current fiction list, placing Ekwensi alongside a Sartre scenario — a useful record of how the book was first positioned for its London readership.
Also in the collection. The Library holds the Heinemann paperback as African Writers Series no. 5. This is the 1954 Dakers first edition, a separate item.
