Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Atta was a juror for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and has received several literary awards for her works, including the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publi...
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The Bead Collector
Sefi Atta
Lagos, January 1976, six years after the Nigerian Civil War. A new military regime has been in power for six months, but rumors are spreading that a countercoup is imminent. At a crowded art exhibition in the affluent Ikoyi neighborhood, Remi Lawal, a Nigerian woman who runs her own greeting-card shop, meets Frances Cooke, who introduces herself as an American art dealer in Nigeria to buy rare beads. They strike up an acquaintance and hospitable Remi welcomes the enigmatic Frances into her world. Over the next few weeks, their conversations navigate an obstacle course of personal confidence about their aspirations, loyalties, and attitudes on marriage and motherhood. At times, Frances’s curiosity steers their exchanges toward Nigeria itself—its colonial inheritance, civil war, attitudes about social norms, corruption, and capitalism. However, the February 13 assassination of General Muhammed causes Remi to reconsider one telling conversation with Frances in a new light. Her deepening disaffection now replaced by a renewed sense of patriotism, she begins to doubt that the bead collector is who she claims to be. With her signature subtlety and wit, Sefi Atta recasts the international espionage tale by bringing the intrigue and politics of family life to the fore. Chronicling a brief friendship, it reveals one Nigerian mother’s yearnings—amidst legacies of conflict and uncertainty—to help build her country from home.
GENRE
Fiction
LANGUAGE
ENGLISH
Sefi Atta
Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1964 and currently divides her time between the United States, England and Nigeria. She qualified as a Chartered Accountant in England, a Certified Public Accountant in the United States, and holds a...
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Atta was a juror for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and has received several literary awards for her works, including the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publi...
ISBN : 9789789153626
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