Win, read and review copies of The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta!
Penguin Classics is excited to offer reading groups 10 advanced proof copies of the feminist classic The Joys of Motherhood, continuing our publication of the works of Buchi Emecheta, one of Africa’s greatest writers and one of the first commercially successful black women writers in the UK, described by Bernardine Evaristo as ‘our literary foremother’ and one of her five favourite books.
About The Joys of Motherhood
‘God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage?… when will I be free?’
There is no greater honour for a woman in an Igbo village than to have children – especially sons. Unable to conceive in her first marriage, Nnu Ego is sent away to a new husband in the city of Lagos, where she finally succeeds in becoming a mother. But things are changing, and a war that unfolds thousands of miles away threatens her family’s fortunes and her entire way of life. In a world where motherhood is everything, what will be left for her at the end of it all?
Powerful, moving and profound, The Joys of Motherhood paints a rich, nuanced portrait of life in colonial Nigeria and dramatizes the changing role of women in the twentieth century.
Buchi Emecheta (1944-2017) was born in Lagos in Nigeria. At the age of ten she won a scholarship to the Methodist Girls’ High School, but by the time she was seventeen she had left school, married and had a child. She accompanied her husband to London where he was a student. Aged 22, she left him, and took an honours degree in Sociology while supporting her five children and writing in the early morning. She went on to write sixteen novels, three children’s stories and numerous articles and television plays.
“Buchi Emecheta re-ignited the rich place of women at the heart of African literature” Ben Okri
“Emecheta writes with subtlety, power, and abundant compassion’ New York Times
How to get involved
To be in with a chance of winning 10 copies to read and review with your reading group please log in and complete the survey below by 17 November.
If successful, each of your members will be expected to share a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Waterstones or the Reading Groups for Everyone website within six weeks of receiving the books. Please only pitch if you can commit to this.
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