Buchi Emecheta was born in Lagos, Nigeria in July 1944. She
emigrated to England in 1962 with her husband and two small
children. After the break-up of her marriage and now with five
small children to support, she lived in a series of slum
apartments, while working full time at the British museum and
studying for a Sociology degree. In 1972, she contributed a column
about black British life to the New Statesman magazine which formed
the basis for her first published novel In The Ditch. While her
children were growing she worked for a number of years as a teacher
and a social worker, before settling down in the 1980s in her north
London home as a full-time writer and academic.
Buchi Emecheta wrote 16 novels during her lifetime including The
Joys of Motherhood, Second-Class Citizen, and the Slave Girl in
1978 for which she won the Jock Campbell New Statesman award. She
wrote several children's stories and plays for stage, TV and radio,
as well as a formal autobiography Head Above Water. In 1983, she
was included as one Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, and
in 2005, she was made an OBE for services to literature. She died
in London in 2017 at the age of 72.
"...tells simply and readably, what it is like to fall by the wayside in these days of affluence" Sunday Telegraph; "Seeing England and our welfare system through Nigerian eyes is a disturbing, but healthy experience." Daily Telegraph
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