Second-Class Citizen

A tale of survival from one of the most beloved Nigerian writers, now in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time.

When Adah's dream of moving to England becomes a reality, she soon discovers that life for a young Nigerian woman living in London in the 1960s is far from what she had imagined. The cold weather and cramped, crumbling accommodation might become bearable, were it not for her tyrannical husband who abuses the power conferred on him by traditional Igbo culture and provides precious little support of any kind.

As Adah finds herself providing for her rapidly growing family—rescuing her children from the hands of a slovenly childminder, learning the unspoken rules of society, and negotiating everyday slights and wounding insults along the way—she takes refuge in her work as a librarian and resolves to salvage her dreams of becoming a writer.

Second-Class Citizen is the story of a woman's courage in the face of crushing inequalities that threaten to overwhelm her as she navigates the rigid patriarchal culture of her birth and discovers the racism at the heart of her adopted home. It also captures in vivid and moving detail, the experience of so many West African families who arrived in the UK at that time. Funny, poignant and profound, Emecheta's groundbreaking novel resonates as powerfully today as when it was first published.