Exploring the History of Biafra: The Rise of an African Legend

R H: What a brilliant book, I thoroughly enjoyed it’s enlightening content although most disturbing and very disappointing. How very badly the world and the UK in particular reacted to this crisis

United Kingdom on Oct 14, 2023

john r beech.: A deeply factual book informative and fillinggzps in my knowledge. Having been a member of the APOSTOLIC CHURCH and knowing the religious fervour of Nigerian Christians, what a way to die, at a prayer meeting asking for peace. May they all rest in peace too.

United Kingdom on Jul 27, 2023

Partick Potter: An angry, insightful account of a shameful episode in Nigeria's (and other countries particularly Britain) history

United Kingdom on Jan 23, 2023

Andrew Cummings: This is the first book written by the journalist then turned writer Frederick Forsyth .

In this non fiction book, Forsyth writes in academic manner a detailed history of nigerian civil war, which was witnessed by him as correspondant and journalist in the biafran side .

In the book he describes the political problems of Nigeria in 1960s and the Biafra war, from a political and military point of view .
He has witnessed this war on Biafra side and so he has obtained information only from biafran sources and official documents until 1969, so the book has a strong pro biafran stance .
The author has a clear knowledge of how politics and military organizations work and is a very good journalist .
This experience will give to Forsyth the material to write a lot of novels, as "the dogs of war" set in Africa in 1970s.

The problem of the book is that it is written with a dry and academic language, similar to the language used in despatches of a press agency or a university book.

So this book is for sure interesting to the academic historian, military history buff and Nigerian citizen (expecially someone from Ibo tribe ) who wants to know more about the...

Italy on Feb 15, 2021

Marcelo Almeida: Even though it happened a long time ago, it still moves me as a human being, all the cruelty we are capable of inflicting to our brothers and sisters. This is still one of the saddest things Africa had to endure, and similar situations keep happening to this day.
Forsyth is known for his fiction work outdone himself with this non-fiction piece. It describes the heroic struggle of the Igbo people to break free from Nigeria and sheds some light on what Gen.Ojukwu did and why he did it. Forsythe showed the world Ojukwu was not a monster like Nigerian authorities tried to show. He was a rich kid, joined the military out of love for his people, had a brilliant carreer and, at the end, lost all his money to a cause he sincerely believed.
It also shows how the Nigerian government, with British support, tried to smother Biafran resistance with starvation, which killed thousands of children in the process. All in the name of "One Nigeria", a country that was drawn on a map by the British without taking under consideration the people in it.
This book is a must read.

United States on Sep 08, 2016

Amazon Customer: I cannot claim to be a scholar of African history, but from the works I have read on the Biafran conflict I find this certainly one of the most readable. It has the benefit of being a contemporary account by a then journalist on the scene, and one who knew the chief protagonist, General Chukwuemeka Ojukwu. Studies compiled over the years largely bear out Forsyth's understanding of the conflict, its causes, and the outcome for Nigeria. This is a fraught subject for Nigeria and Africa in general. Unfortunately, for Nigeria, the One Nigeria policy of General Gowon, which General Ojukwu had supported, until well after the beginning of the pogroms of the Hausa-Fulani against the Igbo people residing in the North, led to the consolidation of a state that remains ethnically fractious. This remains true today for many states in Africa, and beyond. Some attribute the rise of Boko Haram to the unremitting of hostility of some in the Muslim North to the progressive entrepreneurial spirit shown by the Igbo and their Eastern ethnic allies encapsulated in what was the Republic of Biafra. That the Easterners were largely Christian converts merely reflects the benefits these people derived from...

United States on Apr 19, 2016

Amazon Customer: I am very sad to say I was growing up when the years of this Biafra history were happening. I was also a resident in U.K. and actually living in the Constituency that Prime Minister Harold Wilson represented in Parliament before he became Prime Minister. That we as a country and particularly many who were concerned citizens at the time, were lied to so deeply and so often regarding this tragic time, has only come to my attention through this great book. The solid shame that must be heaped upon so many of those in our Government at the time, be they ministers, ambassadors, civil servants and the like, especially when they were in elected positions supposedly representing the people of Britain, is almost more than I can comprehend. I struggled initially to understand the logistics of this whole country as the map was only at the beginning of my Kindle downloaded book, so had no reference after I had started to read, of the area and the names of the towns. I would have wished for a paper copy of the map, which would have aided my reading. No matter, after several chapters in, I was able to figure it out and my horror began. I lived in Africa for a few years with my Engineer husband,...

United States on Oct 11, 2015

Mario Pf.: Heute mag Frederick Forsyth den meisten Lesern eher durch seine weltbekannten und erfolgreich verfilmten Spionage-Thriller wie die Akte ODESSA oder Der Schackal bekannt sein, doch der oft als Großmeister des actiongeladenen Spionageromans titulierte Brite begann seine schriftstellerische Karriere als Journalist. Soweit so gut, doch man kann zurecht behaupten dass es der Nigerianische Bürgerkrieg und die Biafra-Krise waren die Forsyth zunächst vom festangestellten zum freien Korrespondenten werden ließen, der auf eigene Faust nach Biafra zurückkehrte um den Kriegsverlauf zu dokumentieren und aus seinen Aufzeichnungen schließlich "The Biafra Story" schuf, sein Debüt als Autor. Vieles von dem was Forsyth dort erlebt hat, hat sein Werk geprägt und sei es nur die Bekanntschaft mit General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, auch einfach genannt Emeka Ojukwu, dem er mit "Emeka" ein eigenes Werk gewidmet hat.

Jüngerer Generationen sagt Biafra sehr wenig, weshalb es ungeachtet der Bedeutung von "The Biafra Story" für das spätere Werk Frederick Forsyths ein bedeutendes mittlerweile schon zeitgeschichtliches Dokument ist. Ein Land verraten und allein im Regen stehen gelassen,...

Germany on Apr 15, 2009