The Umuofia Arts and Books Festival is established in honour of the literary icon, Chinua Achebe, and named after the fictional village in his seminal novel, Things Fall Apart.
By Adedamola Jones Adedayo
The Umuofia Arts and Books Festival is set to host world-renowned novelist and serial Booker Prize nominee, Chigozie Obioma, in Enugu, in his first book reading in the Southeastern region of Nigeria.
Tagged “A Literary Evening with Chigozie Obiọma”, the event will be held on Saturday, 20th June, 2026, ahead of the Umuofia Arts and Books Festival, which will also be held in Enugu from 9th to 11th July.
The literary evening will feature a conversation across all of Chigozie Obiọma’s three award-winning novels: The Fishermen (2015), An Orchestra of Minorities (2019), and The Road to the Country (2024).
Obioma has also won the LA Times Book Prize, the Internationaler Literaturpreis, the FT/Oppenheimer Prize for Fiction, and an NAACP Image Award, along with numerous other nominations for fiction. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Financial Times, Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere.
The Umuofia Arts and Books Festival is established in honour of the literary icon, Chinua Achebe, and named after the fictional village in his seminal novel, Things Fall Apart. Every year, the festival brings together artists, thinkers and enthusiasts from across the world to Southeastern Nigeria in celebration of arts, culture, books and philosophy. The latest edition is themed “The Architecture of Our Stories”.
Organised by the Eagle Nest Book Club, the parent society of the Umuofia festival, in collaboration with Pages and Lounges Book Club and Centre for Memories Book Club, the pre-festival event will be held at Cafe One, Enugu. It is open to the public, and literary enthusiasts and lovers of Obioma’s books are invited. The event is free, but attendees are expected to buy drinks, snacks, or coffee at the Cafe.
Registration details for the event are available on the portal here.