Chukwuemeka Ike (Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike) Biography

Nigerian novelist, born in Eastern Nigeria, educated at Government College, Ibadan, and Stanford University, California. He has produced the authoritative University Development in Africa: The Nigerian Experience (1976), and has held several important administrative academic posts in Nigeria. Most of his novels are satirical and deftly comic exposés of university life in West Africa, and could be described as African versions of the campus novel. Ike's novels of university life, which have wide social significance and display a radically populist stance, include Toads for Supper (1965), about a philandering undergraduate; The Naked Gods (1970), which focuses on academic intrigues among British and American expatriates; and The Chicken Chasers (1980). Other novels include The Potter's Wheel (1976), about a boy's spartan regime in a Nigerian school; Expo 77 (1980), a detective story which investigates examination leaks; and Sunset at Dawn (1976), which explodes myths about the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70) in its sympathetic portrayal of Dr Kanu, a Biafran official, and Fatima, his northern Nigerian wife.