Quote by Flora Nwapa: “A woman who has children is not afraid of death.”

Having children changes your relationship to fear. You have already passed something of yourself into the future — you are part of something larger than your own life. This is not a statement about recklessness, but about the quiet courage that comes from knowing your existence has already extended beyond you.

Efuru was published in 1966, the year Nigeria experienced its first military coup and the country began descending toward the Biafran civil war. Nwapa was writing at a moment when both political upheaval and the question of whose stories deserved to be told were urgent across West Africa.

Nigerian novelist and publisher, the first African woman to be published by a major international press, with her novel Efuru appearing in 1966. She later founded her own publishing house, Tana Press, in 1977, to support African writers on their own terms. Her work centred the lives of Igbo women with unprecedented depth.