Elechi Amadi

Elechi Amadi (12 May 1934 – 29 June 2016) was a Nigerian author and soldier. He was a former member of the Nigerian Armed Forces. He was an author of plays and novels that are generally about African village life, customs, beliefs, and religious practices prior to contact with the Western world.

Quotes

The Concubine (1966)

• It was a fact that if Amadioha has insisted on taking a man’s life, no medicine man could do anything about it...”
  • Page 9

• What hurts one man may benefit another” and “a diseased village is a good village to a medicine man”
  • Page 83-84.

• One thing is clear: I shall marry Ihuoma. She is a human being, and if marrying a woman like her is a fatal mistake, I am prepared to make it. If I am her husband for a day before my death my soul will go singing happily to the spirit world. There also I shall be prepared to dare the wrath of four hundred Sea Kings for her sake.

• Ihuoma is the sea-king’s main interest and her male admires are victims of circumstance and of their own misdeeds”
  • Page 29.

• No one wanted to betray his admiration. There was silence for a time.
  • Page 119.

• He reconciles himself to these forces and treats them with reverence and dignity. He believes that his every action is guided and directed by spirits”
  • Page 127.

• There are few women like Ihuoma in the world... It is death to marry them and they leave behind a harrowing string of dead husbands. They are usually beautiful, very beautiful but dogged by their invisible husbands of the spirit world. With some spirits marriage is possible if an expert on sorcery is consulted. With the sea-king it is impossible. He is too powerful to be fettered and when he is on the offensive he is absolutely relentless. He unleashes all the powers at his command and they are fatal”
  • Page 196.