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One day in 1957, writes Alan Hill, Heinemann’s
London office received a manuscript from a young
graduate of Ibadan University, Nigeria. “We
recognised its quality and accepted it. The
manuscript was entitled Things Fall Apart;
the author was Chinua Achebe.”
There might, Hill surmised, be other comparable
writers hidden in Africa, needing only a publisher
with the faith and resources to publish them in
their own countries and to expose them to a global
audience. It was, he says, a deeply exciting
prospect.
Hill,
then educational books director at Heinemann,
visited Africa and also enlisted the help of a West
Africa specialist, Van Milne. They decided to
produce a cheap paperback of Things FaII
Apart and find other books to go with it.
Achebe had written his second novel No Longer
at Ease. Milne got in touch with Kenneth Kaunda
who was just out of prison and writing a book about
Zambia’s struggle for independence. Milne also
approached the Nigerian novelist Cyprian Ekwensi
who gave him the manuscript for Burning
Grass. These four books were launched as the
African Writers Series which has now expanded to
over 300 titles and is celebrating its 30th
anniversary.
Alan Hill adds in an article in Logos magazine:
“We needed an editor on the ground to act as our
eyes and ears. We offered the job to Chinua Achebe;
he accepted it and we were in business.
“There followed a wonderfully fruitful decade
during which we published 100 titles – fiction,
drama and poetry – mostly of high literary
quality.
“Today, the series includes most of those
writers who – unknown when first published – have
become the leading names in African literature:
Achebe, Ngugi, Ekwensi, Kwei Armah, Ali Mazrui, as
well as some who achieved fame as statesmen such as
Mandela, Kenyatta, Kaunda.”
Though profit was not the primary concern, the
series made money. “Things Fall Apart sold
only 2,000 copies in its first two years. It then
went on to sell several millions. We have always
used the profits of big-selling books to support
the many worthwhile titles which would be less
economically viable. So any young writer of merit
can find publication in the African Writers
Series.”
Adewale Maja-Pearce, who now edits the series,
reads all the new manuscripts. Of the 11 titles he
chose for 1992, four are first novels.
What can the series be said to have contributed
to African culture, development and publishing?
It brought modern African literature to readers
previously reliant on English classics, and
established it with African education authorities.
The books are widely borrowed from African
libraries. They are now found in school and college
syllabuses throughout the world.
They include poetry by Jack Mapanje, recently
released after long imprisonment in Malawi. They
include short stories by Nadine Gordimer, Nobel
prize winner from South Africa, who asked to be
published alongside her African peers.
The series has provided a platform for
politicians to explain their thinking. The fact
that several of the writers have had their work
banned indicates that what they wrote has influence
and that it seemed threatening to governments.
One observer suggests that Heinemann writers
have fulfilled their ambition of helping create
Africa’s image of itself and may have contributed
to the pressure for multi-party democracy, even if
they had few hopes of great change.
The series has been criticised for being
accessible only to an English-speaking elite.
However, given the vast number of African
languages, 400 in Nigeria alone, it at least
enabled writers to be read in much of the
continent, And the number of Heinemann books in
African languages is growing. Ngugi’s latest were
published in Gikuyu. His and Achebe’s have been
translated in Zimbabwe into Shona. Heinemann are
translating Achebe into South African languages and
have published in Setswana the Botswana Writers
Series.
Another criticism is that Heinemann and other
British-based multinational publishers creamed off
the best writers and overwhelmed local
publishing.
The alternative view is that, though they
initially went to Africa to sell British
schoolbooks, they went on to recruit local writers
and create a market which local publishers
(including the now locally- owned Heinemann Kenya)
can exploit. Heinemann titles are published by
African publishers, an important facility given the
book famine resulting from economic crisis. “The
African Writers Series set a standard to which both
authors and local publishers could aspire” writes a
university teacher.
Publishing in Africa by Heinemann and others has
created jobs in printing and the book trade and
even for lecturers in the new subject of African
literature. Vicky Unwin, international director of
Heinemann Educational, says that the success of the
African Writers Series and its impact on school
syllabuses encouraged the formation of Heinemann
Nigeria and Kenya and their launch of other
textbook publishing. Heinemann Nigeria now employs
about 100 people.
She adds that Zimbabwe Publishing House licenses
many Heinemann titles and its profitability is
largely based on them.
Alan Hill writes that Nigeria, Kenya and
Zimbabwe now have a national literary culture
supported by local publishing. These are also the
countries where multinational publishers have
operated with only light government interference.
In contrast, the Kaunda government in Zambia
opposed private publishing as undermining its
control of education; so Zambia has had hardly any
literary publishing locally.
Even in Kenya, the government has begun
producing the full range of school textbooks,
depriving local publishers of their main income. In
Nigeria, where the Ministry of Education prescribes
the books, publishers have to go cap-in- hand for
contracts; and the tariff on paper makes bookshop
prices expensive. In these difficult circumstances,
Heinemann’s African Writers Series has performed a
real service.
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