The changing face of Nigerian literature | British Council

Nigerian literary greats Amos Tutuola and Chinua Achebe were first published by UK publishing houses, Faber and Heinemann, in 1952 and 1958 respectively. This was the beginning of a long tradition of novels written by African authors being published in the West before being imported back to the author's country of origin. The celebrated Heinemann African Writers Series, established in London in 1962, had an enormous influence on the (predominantly male-authored) African literary canon, publishing more than 350 titles between 1962 and 2000. Popular novels, such as those published as part of Macmillan's Pacesetters series, were widely distributed and read throughout Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, although they were actually conceived, edited and illustrated in the UK. It has only been over the past ten years that a new generation of publishing houses - such as Kachifo, Cassava Republic and Parresia Publishers - have started publishing contemporary fiction in Nigeria. This is providing an outlet for a new generation of writers in a literary landscape still dominated by large educational publishing houses.