The Bride Price

• Book Title: The Bride Price ( Oxford University Press)
• Written by: Emecheta Buchin
  
• Type of book: Short story
  

My comments:
Florence Onye Buchi Emecheta was born to Igbo parents in a small village near Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, in 1944. She moved to Britain with her student husband in 1962, studied sociology at the University of London, and worked in a library and later as a community worker. Her first novel was published in 1972, and since then she has written about twenty novels, as well as children´s books and television plays. She has also been a teacher and visiting professor of English at several universities in the United States, Britain, and Nigeria.

This book is about the Nigerian costumes. It’s very difficult for Occidental society to understand their way of life. It tells the story of a young girl and her family.
The story is about a young lady, Aku-nna and her little brother. They live with their parents but their father died because of a sudden illness. When he dies, their go to thir uncle´s house because he inherits everything of his brother including his wife and children.
In her new, strange home the young lady fall in love with her teacher, although everyone says he is not a suitable husband for her, not because he is her techer, but because of the fact that he is a member of a slave family, and free families should not be mixed with slave ones. The more the world tries to separate them, the more they are drawn together - until, finally, something has to break… Aku-nna gets ill and dies after his having her first child.
They fight for their love and stay together although the society pressure, the story becomes a legend for young ladies in Nigeria, because of their deep love, and the consequences of being against the culture. It’s now a believed myth that if you don’t married the husband that your family chooses for you; you will not survive your first child.

I enjoyed the story a lot and if you are interested on the way of life of different cultures this is an excellent oportunity to discover a new world! The book describes the places and the traditions in a very real way, you can imagine the situations and their costumes. I totally recommend it!