Flora Nwapa, a novelist, publisher, short-story writer, and author of children's books, is best known as the first female novelist in Nigeria and the first African woman to write and publish a novel in English ( Efuru 1966). Although early critics of African literature did not recognize the significance of her work, Nwapa is now widely praised for her ability to adapt the English language to capture the flavor of the Igbo idiom. Nwapa offers to readers a fresh perspective on traditional West African culture and modern Nigeria by exploring a woman's point of view; furthermore, her use of the oral tradition and the folk language of village women reflects a commitment to create literature from those sources.

Nwapa, the eldest of six children, was born in Oguta, in eastern Nigeria, the area in which most of her fiction is set. As a child she was surrounded by women who...