The Last Duty

The Last Duty

by Isidore Okpewho

Isidore Okpewho was born November 9, 1941, at Agbor in the Midwest region of Nigeria, now Delta State and Edo State. Delta is predominantly Igbo (Ibo) speaking, while Edo is predominantly Urhobo speaking. Okpewho, who has an Igbo-speaking mother and an Urhobospeaking father, graduated from University College in Ibadan in 1964, then worked for the Federal Ministry of Education, the Ministry of External Affairs, and Longman publishers. He spent eight years at Longman as an editor at its Nigeria office. During this time, before emigrating to pursue a doctorate in English in the United States, Okpewho published his first novel, The Victims (1970), and completed the first draft of his second novel, The Last Duty. He began the latter novel toward the end of 1969 (when the Nigerian civil war was drawing to a close), completing it the following year. The Last Duty has gained renown as one of the finest fictional accounts of the psychological damage done to ordinary citizens by the three-year Nigerian civil war.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

Colonial legacies. The Last Duty is set at a time when the Nigerian nation was at the brink of disintegration