I Saw the Sky Catch Fire (Plume Contemporary Fiction) - Softcover

Echewa, T. Obinkaram

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452269490 ISBN 13: 9780452269491

Publisher: Plume, 1993

Synopsis

The day before Ajuzia leaves for America, his grandmother spins a skein of tales, weaving a colorful, bawdy, powerfully evocative tapestry of Nigerian life.Wonderfully specific in its sense of place and the all-too-human people who inhabit it, I Saw the Sky Catch Fire captures a world of myth, magic, and gods in a novel which is as broad as it is deep.

About this title

From Library Journal:

On the evening before he is to leave his wife, newborn daugther, and Nigerian village of Uzemba for an American college education, Ajuzia's grandmother tells him the story of how the battle of the sexes once escalated into a woman's war against the government of colonial Nigeria. Her anecdotes are intriguing and often comical--to punish a male transgressor, women gather in a group and sit on him--and the reader longs for more tales of women's strength (called Oha Ndom , "the Solidarity of Women"). In Part 2, the novel jumps back one year. Ajuzia meets and marries Stella and eventually leaves for America. Five years later, Ajuzia returns. His grandmother is dying and Stella is pregnant with another man's child. As Ajuzia and Stella resolve their conflicts, Nigerian-born Echewa shows how a changing society has substituted individuality for community and reveals the purpose of the grandmother's storytelling. A brief Igbo-English glossary is included. Recommended, especially for African and women's collections.
- Harold Au genbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

Echewa's remarkable novel is composed mainly of stories told to a young man by his grandmother on the night before he leaves his Nigerian village for college in the United States.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0452269490
• ISBN 13: 9780452269491
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336