Novel
Toads for Supper
Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike · 1965
Synopsis
Amadi Chukwuka is the first in his village to go to university. His people paid for his studies and built him a hut to work in; they also chose a betrothed for him, sent to teacher training college to be worthy of him. On campus, he changes subject, then meets Aduke Olowu, a Yoruba student, and becomes engaged to her. There remain the betrothed from the village, a girl from Lagos who appears one day at his door, and two families who will not get along.
Context
The manuscript was finished as early as 1962, but publishers turned it down for three years before Harvill Press took it in London. Its author, then a university administrator, had decided to write after reading Things Fall Apart, and he knew the milieu he depicts at first hand. The University of Southern Nigeria does not exist: it draws on the one where he worked. Two years after publication, the tension between Igbo and Yoruba that the book stages led to the secession of Biafra. A sequel appeared forty-two years later.
Who it is for
In English, with no French version. A campus comedy, readable without knowing anything of the country, but better to know that Igbo and Yoruba were then disputing the leadership of the federation.
Prizes and reception
The book made its author one of the most widely read novelists in the country's schools, and was listed as early as 1966 among the Nigerian novels of the year.