The Rape of Shavi was published in 1983 by Ogwugwu Afor. The novel is a departure from Emecheta’s usual realistic mode. Shavi is a fictional African kingdom — isolated, self-sufficient, governed by traditions that are benign if not always fair. A group of European scientists and refugees, fleeing an unspecified nuclear disaster, crash-land near Shavi. The Shavians welcome them with hospitality. The Europeans respond by exploiting Shavi’s natural resources, undermining its social structures, and ultimately destroying the kingdom’s independence.
The allegory is transparent: this is the story of European colonialism compressed into a single narrative. But Emecheta’s treatment is more nuanced than the premise suggests. The Europeans are not uniformly villainous — some are genuinely grateful for Shavi’s hospitality, some are horrified by what their companions do — and the Shavians are not uniformly noble. The kingdom’s traditions include practices that Emecheta, a lifelong feminist, clearly finds objectionable, and the arrival of the Europeans exposes existing tensions within Shavian society that might have erupted eventually without external provocation.
The “rape” of the title is both literal and metaphorical — the novel includes a sexual assault that symbolizes the larger violation of Shavi’s sovereignty — and the double meaning gives the book its rhetorical force.
Collecting The Rape of Shavi
First edition (Ogwugwu Afor, London, 1983): Paperback.
Market values:
- First edition: $30–$80
- Very good: $15–$40