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A Tale of Ikenga is a remarkable story of the sojourn of Ikenna, the main character and hero of the novel: through war, personal and family tragedy, self-appropriation and improvement; culminating in the retrieval of his family’s revered ancestral totem: its IKENGA. The author brilliantly weaves together factual history with fictional storytelling; which succeeds in treating the reader to a gripping fable. Emeka Aniagolu has in the past twenty-odd years, gifted the world with brilliant factional novels that enrich Igbo, Nigerian, African and world literature: Black Mustard Seed; African Glimpses: Three Short Stories; Ozo: A Story of an African Knighthood; Dreadlocks & The Seven Monsters; Hollows of the Mask; Ejima; Aftermath; A Quiver of Arrows: Ten Short Stories; Anyali; and now, A Tale of Ikenga. It is arguable that a great deal of handicap Africans face in attaining effective modern development, among other factors, is low to absent historical inquiry and reflection. The tendency to treat the past as something dead and gone, something done with; rather than as a treasure trove of pertinent knowledge and wisdom, for the betterment of their contemporary life and future. To that extent, in a reflective postscript, the author indulges the reader in a trenchant politico-historical analysis, that is as factually instructive as it is philosophically insightful; rigorously querying settled and unsettled issues for both teachers and students of African politics, governance, precolonial, colonial and postcolonial history and sociology.