Structure

“There Was A Country” by Chinua Achebe is separated into four large parts with numerous unnumbered subsections in each part.

Part 1 describes the author’s childhood and student years. Chinua also tells of his hopes and dreams to develop African literature written by Africans about Africa that would be accepted in the literary world. In this section, he also writes of the internal conflicts that existed between various ethnicities and Nigeria’s existence as a colonial possession of Great Britain. Finally, it tells of the jubilation of the people when Great Britain agrees to grant Nigeria its independence.

Part 2 covers the Nigeria-Biafra War that breaks out when Eastern Nigeria declares its independence and proclaims its status as the sovereign Republic of Biafra. Part 3 describes the final stages of the war and the humanitarian disaster that existed among the Biafran people. Part 4 describes the aftermath of the war...