Top ten books about Nigeria

Barnaby Phillips is a senior correspondent for Al Jazeera English, which he joined at the time of its launch in 2006. His documentary Burma Boy won the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award. His new book is Another Man's War: The Story of a Burma Boy in Britain's Forgotten Army.

One of the author's top ten books about Nigeria, as shared at the Guardian:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

As a young man Achebe read the canon of western literature, but could not find his own people's story there. So he set about writing a tragic tale: of how a vulnerable society, and a flawed man, could not cope with the military superiority and crushing arrogance of the white invaders. Millions of readers around the world have since identified with Things Fall Apart as the definitive account of what happened to their own societies when the Europeans arrived. Invariably the colonial legacy was destructive and destabilising, and one that "Nigeria", a British invention, has never quite recovered from.

Read about the other books on the list.

Things Fall Apart is among Pushpinder Khaneka's three best books on Nigeria, Hallie Ephron's ten best books for a good cry, Helon Habila's three books to help understand Nigeria, and Martin Meredith's ten books to read on Africa.

--Marshal Zeringue