Oxford Bookworms Library: Level 5:: The Bride Price: Level 5: 1,800 Word Vocabulary - Softcover

Emecheta, Buchi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0194792188 ISBN 13: 9780194792189

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

Synopsis

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Review

An artless story about a young Nigerian girl who has to leave Lagos and go back to her mother's family village after her father dies. There she and her young schoolteacher fall in love, but she is kidnapped into marrying someone else, and a scandal arises from the lies she tells her kidnapper about her loss of virginity in order to escape him. Nevertheless her lover rescues her and they live happily until she dies in childbirth, confirming the tradition that a dowryless bride will not survive. Emecheta as in Second-Class Citizen (1975), explicitly fills in her lessons about the clash between modernization and tribal residues in the 1950's. Particular twists crop up when it is a WWII wound that kills the girl's father, and an Esso-built hut that the young couple is so delighted to move into. But the book remains a fairy tale, written with a certain genuine sweetness, offering nothing that would disturb - or especially challenge - an adolescent reader. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis

When her father dies, Aku-nna and her young brother have no one to look after them. They are welcomed by their uncle because of Aku-nna's 'bride price' - the money that her future husband will pay for her. In her new, strange home one man is kind to her and teaches her to become a woman. Soon they are in love, although everyone says he is not a suitable husband for her. The more the world tries to separate them, the more they are drawn together - until, finally, something has to break.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0194792188
• ISBN 13: 9780194792189
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112