A Letter Away From Asaba: A Novella

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In the book you explore the idea of being ‘changed’ by being in the West, where did you pull that from? Advocate: We advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion within the university and society at large. Join us on this empowering journey as we prioritize holistic well-being, offer career development and mentorship opportunities, and provide resources for personal growth and self-empowerment. 🌸✨

The process of writing was good. I got lots of my friends involved who wanted to help. Being in a university space gives access to inform a lot more people and broadens the reach. Being in an academic space means I can get advice and knowledge from people. If I waited until after graduation, I wouldn’t have that community of people who are passionate about history, and decolonising the curriculum, so though it was scary I am glad I did it. I think there’s a staffing issue. There’s only so much you can decolonise if you don’t have people that specialise in certain areas. There are scholars out there, but you don’t see them at our university, or really the UK in general. America seems to have a lot more diversity in what they offer. Also reading lists; I am taking a course about contemporary Africa, and we had a reading list where every author was a white man. I think diverse reading lists are so important because not only does it enrich your knowledge, but it also introduces you to so many different perspectives. Letters were always going to be a key part of the book. I felt that it was essential to have the two protagonists, Onome and Chioma, communicate with each other through letters, given that they live so far away from each other. Initially, I wrote with the intention of having narrative chapters between each letter. However, after I sent in my first draft to my lovely editor Lily, she recommended that I transform my manuscript into an epistolary novella, meaning a work of fiction that only consists of letters and other documents. In the following written exchange, Claudia shares some insight into the writing process behind A Letter Away from Asaba, and offers advice to aspiring writers.A book that really became the base of my research was American scholars Elizabeth Bird and Fraser Ottanelli’s The Asaba Massacre: Trauma, Memory and the Nigerian Civil War. It was such a great read and incredibly insightful. A Letter Away From Asaba' is an account of the Asaba massacre during the Nigerian Civil War woven into a fictional narrative.

I’ve actually already started working on my second novel, but I’m only halfway through the first draft. Unfortunately, I had to stop writing it once I decided to self-publish A Letter Away From Asaba. It became too overwhelming working on a new manuscript whilst publishing a piece of work. However, I definitely look forward to continuing the story once A Letter Away From Asaba has been published. Perhaps I’ll continue writing it over summer, it really depends on whether I feel ready to do so. Writing novels is something I hope to do long-term as it’s been such a phenomenal experience so far working towards publishing A Letter Away From Asaba. How do you think fiction can be a powerful tool in educating people on the realities of colonialism and its consequences? What do you hope for other students to take from the book and the history it helps to uncover? What next for Claudia Efemini? Will you focus on writing novels after you complete your degree? If so, have you got another story you want to tell? So today and tomorrow, let’s empower each other. Let’s share our stores. Let’s stand up to injustice. Let’s work toward a more equitable world for all women.On behalf of One Edinburgh, we want to wish our Linkedln community a very happy #internationalwomensday. The women of #oneedinburgh are all doing their part to catalyse positive change in their own right. Today, we celebrate them and the role women leaders play in enriching our communities around the world. International Women’s Day also gives us an opportunity to recognise the inner and outer work we all need to do to achieve gender equality for all women, regardless of where they come from.

Writing fiction based in a country that I have never lived in was quite challenging. I had to draw on conversations I’ve had with people who live there, my ethnic ties to Nigeria and my imagination. The dual setting of the novella definitely helped ease the writing process, given that the book is set in London and Asaba. Writing has always been a huge hobby of mine. Growing up as a child, I would start writing different kinds of novels all the time, but I would always lose motivation around the third or fourth chapter. However, in my final year of the IB diploma programme, I wrote my History Extended Essay on press censorship of the Asaba massacre, a tragic event that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. That essay never really left my mind. Even as I continued into university, I was still captivated by how under-researched and neglected it was within the scholarship. Wow. Just wow. The talented Claudia Efemini has written a beautiful novel that shines a lot on an important topic that, unfortunately, not many are knowledgeable about or have had the chance to be informed on. It was extremely hard to put this book down and 10x harder to not think about the story and its characters throughout the day. Claudia Efemini has created something that everyone should read, if only to learn a pivotal part in Nigerian history. Radical. It is one of the more interesting words in the English language, in that its connotative meaning can be either very negative or very positive. I do not hesitate to call Claudia Efemini radical, and I mean it in the most positive sense.The long awaited A Letter Away From Asaba is a dazzling debut by Claudia Efemini, writer and History and Politics student at the University of Edinburgh. Another difficulty was drawing the line between fact and fiction. As this is a historical fiction, it was important for me to ensure that there is a sense of reality and accuracy in the story, but I also had to weave fictional narratives into the plot. Nevertheless, the entire writing process was fun and enriching! A second-year History and Politics student at the University of Edinburgh, Claudia is also one of the youngest published authors in Scotland. Next month, her novel, A Letter Away from Asaba, is set to debut, delving into a turbulent episode of Nigerian history that is poorly understood by many in the United Kingdom today. Although her novel is a work of historical fiction, it is based on real events that unfolded during the Asaba Massacre of 1967, which took place during the Nigerian Civil War. Perhaps it is not surprising that very little is known about the massacre in the UK today - indeed, there was precious little publicly available information about it at the time. Censorship within the British press played a significant role in throwing up a smokescreen, and this became a key theme in the novel. Onome is an international student from Nigeria studying law at King’s College London, whilst her friend Chioma lives in Asaba. The story centres on these two protagonists, as they attempt to piece together what really happened at Asaba through a series of diary entries and letters. Through this project, I wanted to illustrate the brutality students faced while protesting their rights during the Soweto uprising. For this reason, I chose the mask as an element to put the viewer in the same position as the Soweto students» Alicia Support: We cultivate a strong sisterhood and community, providing a platform for sharing experiences and extending emotional support.