Examines the political nature of culture and specifically literature. This title challenges the way the West has appropriated Africa with a particular emphasis on how 'imperialist' literature has been used to justify its dispossession and degradation.

'A moving account of an exceptional life . . . A story of the triumphs of the mind, told in the words of one of the world's most gifted writers.'
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr

CHINUA ACHEBE, awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2007, is one of the giants of modern literature. A masterful novelist, poet, short-story writer and essayist, his work burns with a passionate commitment to human dignity and the power of stories. Now, in Home and Exile, his first fully autobiographical work, Achebe recalls his childhood and early adulthood and reveals the man behind the writing.

'A joy and an illumination to read.'
- Nadine Gordimer Man Booker International Judge
'Home and Exile shines through the cold cant of our winter of new empires, doing for stories what spring does for apricot trees.'
- Richard Flanagan author of Gould's Book of Fish
'A distillation of the thoughts and feelings of one of the world's foremost contemporary writers - it speaks for the countless millions who were silenced for generation upon generation.'
- Sunday Herald
'Delves deep into the psyche of oppressed peoples and concludes that it is vital for them to take back their own stories.'
- Observer

This trenchant and illuminating book by one of Africa's most influential and celebrated writers is a major statement on the importance and dangers of stories, one in which Achebe makes telling use of his personal experiences to examine the political nature of culture and specifically literature.
It is the weaving of the personal into the bigger picture that makes Home and Exile so remarkable and affecting. It's the closest we are likely to get by way of Achebe's autobiography but it is also a brilliantly argued critique of imperialism. Achebe challenges the way the West has appropriated Africa with a particular emphasis on how 'imperialist' literature has been used to justify its dispossession and degradation.
Above all this is a book that articulates persuasively why literature matters. Stories are a real source of power in the world, Achebe concludes, and to imitate the literature of another culture is to give that power away.