Coal City. A Novel. With a Foreword by Reinhard W. Sander and Peter K. Ayers.

Notes

The first edition of the first full-length novel by pioneer of Onitsha Market Literature - cheaply-produced vernacular pamphlets manufactured and sold in the eastern Nigerian town of Onitsha in the 1950s - Ogali Ogali (1935-2006). The introduction of Coal City states that his 1956 play 'Veronica My Daughter' sold 'at least 250,000 copies' and Coal City itself has its roots in two of Ogali's earlier novelettes Eddie The Coal-City Boy and Caroline the One-Guinea Girl, although the text is completely rewritten. It tells the story of Nnenna, ('her breasts were killing and her buttocks contained atoms of magnetism', per the blurb to the rear wrapper) and her brother Emenike ('the 'Stormy Weather' of Coal City'), set in a fictionalised version of the south-eastern Nigerian city of Enugu.