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Akajiofo Press

Free Chapter – The City He Never Returned To

Read the First Chapter

From The City He Never Returned To by Ibekwe Paul Chukwuemeka

 
Book jacket text: Lagos, 1965. Okechukwu Nwankwo believes his ledger of numbers can protect his family. He is wrong. When war forces them to flee, his wife and daughter carry not just survival, but proof—the ledger, a stone, a florin, the names of the dead. Decades later, his daughter Chidinma inherits this evidence and transforms it into a weapon. Her battlefield is Nigeria’s bureaucracy. Her mission: to build institutions that can hold a nation’s truth. Spanning sixty years and four generations, The City He Never Returned To is an intimate family saga and a visionary blueprint for national repair. IBEKWE PAUL CHUKWUEMEKA was born in Nigeria to parents who survived the civil war. He is the founder of Akajiofo Press, based in Brussels. This is his debut novel. CITY NEVER RETURNED CHUKWUEMEKA THE CITY HE NEVER RETURNED TO A Story of War, Memory, and Repair IBEKWE PAUL CHUKWUEMEKA Akajiofo Press, Brussels Akajiofo Press.
The full book jacket for ‘The City He Never Returned To’ by Ibekwe Paul Chukwuemeka, a multigenerational saga exploring war and memory.

“The coin was never meant to be a talisman. It was meant to be a pound of meat, or a measure of garri, or perhaps the start of a school fee… He did not know then that the future was a predator.”

📖 About this sample

This PDF contains the complete first chapter of The City He Never Returned To – a novel based on true family history from the Nigeria‑Biafra war. The story follows Okechukwu Nwankwo, a civil servant who keeps a ledger of his family’s losses, and his daughter Chidinma, who grows up to turn that private ledger into a national repair commission.

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About the book: Based on true family history from the Nigeria‑Biafra war, The City He Never Returned To is a novel about loss, ledgers, and the slow work of institutional repair. If you love African literary fiction, transitional justice, or stories of hope after war, this one is for you.