OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# An Image of Africa

An Image of Africa:Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness is the published and amended version of the second Chancellor's Lecture given by Nigerian writer and academic Chinua Achebe at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in February 1975.

## Quotes

* A Conrad student informed me in Scotland that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz. Which is partly the point. Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril.
* The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art.
* It always surprised him, he went on to say, because he never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff, you know.
** Expressing the painful irony of encountering an older man who think literature and history are not only interchangeable, but don't actually exist for an entire continent.
* The earth seemed unearthly.
** Author illustrates the antithesis of white Europe and racism.
* Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth.
** Authors praise for the main character in the novel
* We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.
** Chinua Achebe interprets Conrads description of Africa as another world.
* A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days.
** Chinua Achebe is depicting the first time Conrad encountered an African American
# Diary of a bad year

Diary of a bad year (published 2007) is a Novel by John Maxwell Coetzee, J M Coetzee a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature

## Quotes

* “The modern state appeals to morality, to religion, and to natural law as the ideological foundation of its existence. At the same time it is prepared to infringe any or all of these in the interest of self-preservation.”
** page17
* “Machiavelli says that if as a ruler you accept that your every action must pass moral scrutiny, you will without fail be defeated by an opponent who submits to no such moral test. To hold on to power, you have not only to master the crafts of deception and treachery but to be prepared to use them where necessary.”
** page 17.
** “The typical reaction of liberal intellectuals is to seize on the contradiction here: How can something be both wrong and right, or at least both wrong and OK, at the same time? What liberal intellectuals fail to see is that this so-called contradiction expresses the quintessence of the Machiavellian and therefore the modern, a quintessence that has been thoroughly absorbed by the man in the street. The world is ruled by necessity, says the man in the street, not by some abstract moral code. We have to do what we have to do. If you wish to counter the man in the street, it cannot be by appeal to moral principles, much less by demanding that people should run their lives in such a way that there are no contradictions between what they say and what they do. Ordinary life is full of contradictions; ordinary people are used to accommodating them. Rather, you must attack the metaphysical, supra-empirical status of necessità and show that to be fraudulent.”
** page 17.
“As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king’s firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict.”
** page 14.
“If you have reservations about the system and want to change it, the democratic argument goes, do so within the system: put yourself forward as a candidate for political office, subject yourself to the scrutiny and the vote of fellow citizens. Democracy does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian.”
** page 15.

## External Links

https://quotepark.com/works/diary-of-a-bad-year-6415/
# Girls at war and other stories

Girls at war is a 1972 short story by Chinua Achebe. The narrative focuses on the essence of survival amidst the uncertainties of war. The story unfolds the intricacies of determination, resilience, and the human spirit's quest for survival through the Reginald Nwankwo, Protagonist. Reginald's encounter with a young woman Gladys on different occasions becomes a metaphor for life's unpredictable paths.

## Quotes

* They led and he followed blindly, his heavy chest heaving up and down in silent weeping ... it was the worst kind of madness, deep and tongue-tied.
** From "The Madman" (pg. 10)​
* We did not ask him for money yesterday; we shall not ask him tomorrow. But today is our day; we have climbed the iroko tree and would be foolish not to take down all the firewood we need.
** From "The Voter" (pg. 16)​
* I don't believe anybody will be so unlike other people that they will be unhappy when their sons are engaged to marry.
** From "Marriage Is a Private Affair" (pg. 22)​
* People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.
** From the story "The Sacrificial Egg"
* When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.
** From the story "The Voter"
* War is war. The strong will always crush the weak. The only difference is that in the process some have made a lot of money and others a lot of misery.
** From the story "Vengeful Creditor"
* In his mind, he could see the ravages of war: destruction, suffering, hunger, and the grotesque faces of men turned beasts by the bitterness of combat.
** From the story "Girls at War"
# Home and Exile

Home and Exile is a novel by Chinua Achebe published in the year 2001. The novel captures his mission to rescue African culture from the narratives written by Europeans. Through his experiences as a student in English schools in Nigeria, he recalls his first encounters with European perspectives on Africa in the works of Joyce Cary and Elspeth Huxley.

## Quotes

* In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything.
* In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything. They can bring out crowds of demonstrators whenever they need them.
* The Igbo people of Southern Nigeria are more than ten million strong and must be accounted one of the major peoples of Africa. Conventional practice would call them a tribe, but I no longer follow that convention. I call them a nation
* The Igbo nation in precolonial times was not quite like any nation most people are familiar with. It did not have the apparatus of centralized government but a conglomeration of hundreds of independent towns and villages each of which shared the running of its affairs among its menfolk according to title, age, occupation, etc.; and its women folk who had domestic responsibilities as well as the management of the scores of four-day and eight-day markets that bound the entire region and its neighbours in a network of daily exchange of goods and news, from far and near.
* The dispossession that caused my shrillness is in retreat though the marks of its pillage are still everywhere. I can see, in spite of them, that I have come a long way.
* It began to dawn on me that although fiction was undoubtedly fictitious it could also be true or false, not with the truth or falsehood of a news item but as to its disinterestedness, its intention, its integrity.
# The Education of a British-Protected Child

The Education of a British-Protected Child is a literary work by Chinua Achebe. The novel captures a portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and explores the African-American Diaspora. It includes insights into Achebe's family life and reflections on the symbolic significance of President Obama's elections.

## Quotes

* We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: "He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.
* ...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
* Africa is people" may seem too simple and too obvious to some of us. But I have found in the course of my travels through the world that the most simple things can still givwe us a lot of trouble, even the brightest among us: this is particularly so in matters concerning Africa.
* I do not see that it is necessary for any people to prove to another that they build cathedrals or pyramids before they can be entitled to peace and safety.
* Paradoxically, a saint like [Albert] Schweitzer can give one a lot more trouble than King Leopold II, villain of unmitigated guilt, because along with doing good and saving African lives Schweitzer also managed to announce that the African was indeed his brother, but only his junior brother.
* The point in all this is that language is a handy whipping boy to summon and belabor when we have failed in some serious way. In other words, we play politics with language, and in so doing conceal the reality and the complexity of our situation from ourselves and from those foolish enough to put their trust in us
* It is appropriate that we celebrate Martin Luther King, a man who struggled so valiantly to restore humanity to the oppressed and the oppressor.
# A Wreath for Udomo

A Wreath for Udomo is a 1956 novel by the South African novelist Peter Abrahams. The novel follows a London-educated black African, Michael Udomo, who returns to Africa to become a revolutionary leader in the fictional country of Panafricanism|Panafrica and is eventually martyred.

## Quotes

* She's vain about her hair
* (Chapter 2, Pg 11)
* It's because I creep up on people, I creep up on them while their backs are turned. Then suddenly without knowing how they realise, I'm there and they want what's there. Only they can't have it.
* (Chapter 2, Pg 24)

## External links

books
# Arrow of God

Arrow of God (1964) by Chinua Achebe The novel centres on Ezeulu, the chief priest of several Igbo villages in colonial Nigeria, who confronts colonial powers and Christian missionaries in the 1920s. The novel was published as part of the influential Heinemann African Writers Series.

## Quotes

* We have no quarrel with Ulu. He is still our protector, even though we no longer fear Abam warriors at night. But I will not see with these eyes of mine his priest making himself lord over us. My father told me many things, but he did not tell me that Ezeulu was king in Umuaro. Who is he, anyway? Does anybody here enter his compound through the man’s gate? If Umuaro decided to have a king we know where he would come from. Since when did Umuachala become head of the six villages? We all know that it was jealousy among the big villages that made them give the priesthood to the weakest. We shall fight for our farmland and for the contempt Okperi has poured on us. Let us not listen to anyone trying to frighten us with the name of Ulu. If a man says yes his chi also says yes: And we have all heard how the people of Aninta dealt with their deity when he failed them. Did they not carry him to the boundary between them and their neighbors and set fire on him? I salute you
** Chapter two
* I have traveled in Olu and I have traveled in Igbo, and I can tell you there is no escape from the white man. He has come. When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool. The white man is like that. Before any of you here was old enough to tie the cloth between the legs I saw with my own eyes what the white man did to Abame. Then I knew there was no escape. As daylight chases away darkness so will the white man drive away all our customs. I know that as I say it now it passes by your ears, but it will happen. The white man has power which comes from the true God and it burns like fire. This is the God about Whom we preach every eighth day.
** Chapter eight
* A man does not speak a lie to his son,” he said. “Remember that always. To say My father told me is to swear the greatest oath
** Chapter nine
* The man was a complete nonentity until we crowned him, and now he carries on as though he had been nothing else all his life. It’s the same with Court Clerks and even messengers. They all manage to turn themselves into little tyrants over their own people. It seems to be a trait in the character of the negro
** Chapter ten
* a man should hold his compound together, not plant dissension among his children
** Chapter twelve
* The man who brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit
** Chapter twelve

## External links

* gradesaver
* Wikipedia
# Life and times of Michael K

Life and times of Michael K (1983) by J. M. Coetzee is a 1983 novel by South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee. The novel won the Booker Prize for 1983. The novel is a story of a man named Michael K, who makes an arduous journey from Cape Town to his mother's rural birthplace, amid a fictitious civil war during the apartheid era, in the 1970-80s.

## Quotes

* You want to stop on the expressway, you pull fifty metres off the roadside...Anything nearer, you can get shot, no warning, no questions asked.'
** Chapter one
* Perhaps, [Michael] thought, it was better when one did not have to rely on other people
** Chapter one part one
* Michael K sat ... watching his mother polish other people's floors, learning to be quiet.
** Chapter one part one
* If she was going to die, she would at least die under blue skies
** Chapter one part one
* Though he had no more business there, he found it hard to tear himself from the hospital. ** Chapter one part one
* He did not seem to have a belief, or did not seem to have a belief regarding help.
** Chapter one part one
* There seemed nothing to do but live
** Chapter one part two
* But why should people with nowhere to go run away from the nice life we've got here?
** Chapter one part two
* They prefer it that we live because we look too terrible when we get sick and die
** Chapter one part two
* He could not imagine ... driving stakes into the ground, erecting fences, dividing up the land
** Chapter one part two
* His was always a story with a hole in it: a wrong story, always wrong
** Chapter one part two
* Can't you tell the difference between a thin man and a skeleton?
** Chapter two
* There is no home left for universal souls, except perhaps in Antarctica or on the high seas
** Chapter two
* As time passed, however, I slowly began to see the originality of the resistance you offered
** Chapter two
* I discovered out in the country ... that there is time enough for everything
** Chapter three

## External links

* — Life and times of Michael K'
* Wikipedia
* goodreads
* super summary
# Everything Good Will Come

Everything good will come is a Bildungsroman|coming-of-age novel by Nigerian author Sefi Atta about a girl growing into a woman in Postcolonial literature|postcolonial Nigeria and England. It was published by Interlink Publishing|Interlink World Fiction in 2005, and won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.

## Quotes

* It occurred to me that there was nothing more precious than satisfaction. That it was possible to end up committing a crime just because you were contaminated by a little discontent. You could convince yourself that you were satisfied, then someone could come along and say, 'But I can offer you more', and then you could begin to think, My life is not worth much after all. In fact, you could tell yourself, My life was completely worthless from the start.
* (Pg. 247,)
* I enjoy writing plays most. I haven't written a radio play in a while and I don't write short stories anymore because the process of submitting them depressed me. I really enjoy revising novels, but drafting them can be a pain.
* (geosireads.wordpress.com

## External links

goodreads
# The Story of an African Farm

The story of an African Farm(published in 1883 under the pseudonym Ralph Iron) was South African author Olive Schreiner 's first published novel. It was an immediate success and has become recognised as one of the first feminist novels.

## Quotes

* The full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the wide, lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth, with its coating of stunted ‘karroo’ bushes a few inches high, the low hills that skirted the plain, the milk-bushes with their long, finger-like leaves, all were touched by a weird and almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light.”
* (Part 1, Chapter 1, Page 35)
* The opening of the novel devotes considerable attention to the setting, which will influence the development of the characters and the movement of the plot.
* And you do not need to. When you are seventeen this Boer-woman will go; you will have this farm and everything that is upon it for your own; but I,’ said Lyndall, ‘will have nothing. I must learn.’”
* (Part 1, Chapter 2, Page 46)
* Lyndall tells Em why she must have an education: She stands to inherit nothing, and she wishes to be independent.
* Very tenderly the old man looked at him. He saw not the bloated body nor the evil face of the man; but, as it were, under deep disguise and fleshly concealment, the form that long years of dreaming had made very real to him.”
* (Part 1, Chapter 3, Pages 56-57)
* Otto gazes upon the sleeping form of Bonaparte Blenkins, who has shown up at the farm worse for wear.

## External links

supersummary
# Elizabeth Costello

Elizabeth Costello (published 2003) is a Novel by John Maxwell Coetzee, J M Coetzee a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature In this novel, Elizabeth Costello, a celebrated aging Australian writer, travels around the world and gives lectures on topics including the lives of animals and literary censorship.

## Quotes

* He is here, with her, out of love. *He cannot imagine her getting through this trial without him at her side.”
** Narrator chapter 1 paragraph 20.
* She inhabits her characters as a woman does, not a man.”
** Susan Mobeus (chapter 1 paragraph 135.
* She is not sure, as she listens to her own voice, whether she believes any longer in what she is saying.”
** Narrator chapter 2 paragraph 18.
* A French or English writer has thousands of years of written tradition behind him…We on the other hand are heirs to an oral tradition.’”
** Emmanuel Egudu chapter 22 paragraph 39.
* They lost their humanity, in our eyes, because of a certain willed ignorance on their part.
** Chapter 3
* Because Costello is his mother’s maiden name, and because he has never seen any reason to broadcast his connection with her, it was not known at the time of the invitation that Elizabeth Costello, the Australian writer, had a family connection in the Appleton community. He would have preferred that state of affairs to continue.”
** Part 1, Page 16.
* “Norma and his mother have never liked each other. Probably his mother would have chosen not to like any woman he married.”
** Part 1, Page 17.
* “His mother is entitled to her convictions, he believes. If she wants to spend her declining years making propaganda against cruelty to animals, that is her right.”
** Part 1, Page 17.
# Disgrace by J M Coetzee

Disgrace (published 1999) is a Novel by J M Coetzee. It won the Booker PrizeThe writer was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years after its publication.

## Quotes

* "Is he happy? By most measurements, yes, he believes he is. However, he has not forgotten the last chorus of Oedipus: Call no man happy until he is dead."
** Chapter 1, page 2.
* The company of women made of him a lover of women and, to a certain extent, a womanizer."
* "Why? Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it."
** Chapter 2, page 16.
* "Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core. As though she had decided to go slack, die within herself for the duration, like a rabbit when the jaws of the fox close on its neck. So that everything done to her might be done, as it were, far away."
** Chapter 3, page 25.
* Scandal. A pity that must be his theme, but he is in no state to improvise.
** Chapter 3, page 31
* That is how it begins.
** Chapter 4, page 38
* ... the whole thing is disgraceful from beginning to end. Disgraceful and vulgar.
** page 45
* Confessions, apologies: why this thirst for abasement? A hush falls. They circle around him like hunters who have cornered a strange beast and do not know how to finish it off.
** page 56.
* It reminds me too much of Mao’s China. Recantation, self-criticism, public apology.
** page 66
* What was ignoble about the Kenilworth spectacle was that the poor dog had begun to hate its own nature. It no longer needed to be beaten. It was ready to punish itself. At that point it would have been better to shoot it.
** page 90.
* Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day. That is the theory; hold to the theory and to the comforts of theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant. That is how one must see life in this country: in its schematic aspect. Otherwise one could go mad. Cars, shoes; women too. There must be some niche in the system for women and what happens to them.
** page 98.
* You behave as if everything I do is part of the story of your life. You are the main character, I am a minor character who doesn’t make an appearance until halfway through.
** page 198.
* You behave as if everything I do is part of the story of your life. You are the main character, I am a minor character who doesn’t make an appearance until halfway through.
** page 198.
* Although he devoted hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: 'Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings, and intentions to each other.' His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.
** pages 3-4.