Flora Nwapa's works mark the genesis of African women's novels. Her novel Efuru (1966) was foundational in expressing the emerging female voice in African Literature. As such, Nwapa's pioneering representation of female characters paved the way for reimaging women in industrious, independent and self-determined roles, a contrast from former depictions of inferior, subjugated and objectified women in African male writings such as the work of Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi and Elechi Amadi. This paper will analyse the genesis of Nigerian Igbo women's writings in the works of Flora Nwapa's Efuru (1966), a foundational novel in the African and Igbo literary tradition as Nwapa was also the first published Igbo female writer.

The significance of Nwapa's place in African women's writing has not always been recognized. Critics such as Chimalum Nwankwo, Oladele Taiwo, Bernth Lindfors and J.I. Okonkwo criticized Nwapa's works as less mature, focusing frivolously on women's ‘small talk’. Bernth Lindfors describes Efuru as a novel focusing on