My Cousin Sammy

Adimora-Ezeigbo’s My Cousin, Sammy, is a novel about the appearance of a teenage orphan from the rural areas at the home of his city-dwelling relatives, a middle-class family with middle-class prejudices and pretensions. Ezeigbo has chosen one of the most representative themes of contemporary African fiction. The regular flow of rural migrants into African cities is as old as the emergence of cities in Africa. Many writers of adult literature have been attracted to this theme, not only because the migration from rural areas to urban centres is a key agent of social transformation but also because the considerable social tensions that it produces often makes exciting story-telling…

“Ezeigbo’s handling of the story of domestic conflict and its resolution through the sheer selfless love and fellow feeling of an eleven year old girl is sustained by skilful storytelling. She is in complete control of her medium in this novel for children in their early teenage years”.

-Judges citation, NLNG-sponsored, The Nigeria Prize for Literature 2007.