Triggering Thriller(s): Eddie Iroh’s 48 Guns for the General

Forty-Eight Guns for the General (1976) has an important place in the corpus of novels that emerged in the decade following the Nigerian Civil War. Defined as a ‘detective novel’ by Chidi Amuta and perhaps more correctly identified as a thriller by Theodora Ezeigbo, Eddie Iroh’s account of a group of white mercenaries in Biafra is at once an heir to the popular literature of Onitsha, and an early example of Nigerian thriller. Both aspects will be discussed in this paper, the main interest of which, however, is in (re)locating Forty-Eight Guns for the General within the production of second-generation authors, stressing its political preoccupations, as well as the ‘serious’ intent behind this apparently action-driven story. I will argue that two narratives of conflict overlap in this book: one that articulates the Biafran experience while the other discusses wider cultural clashes by juxtaposing a white minority to a black majority (to the detriment of the latter). Biafra becomes, in this perspective, a metaphor for Nigeria/Africa, and the novel itself a commentary not only on the Civil War, but also on the neo-colonialism that continues to plague the continent. Forty-Eight Guns for the General will therefore be read as a novel that builds on local sources to foster a new popular genre, as well as as one that is in clear dialogue with mainstream Nigerian literature, responding to both local and national issues.