Folktales are timeless and appeal to people of all ages. This timeless quality is found basically in its shunning of any particular historical context and in portraying characters who fit into ancient and modern times. Again, the philosophies of life explored in folktales are relevant for all times, for they give insights into how best to move in a world teeming with human beings from all walks of life. Part of the universal appeal of folktale is the simple nature of its language, which makes it accessible to both young and old people. Most folktales have satire built into their structures such that these stories are spiced with humour, ridicule and exaggeration and, like many double-voiced narratives, entertain as well as teach morals to their consumers.

In this collection by Efe Farinre, we are entertained with 15 freshlytold familiar and not-too-familiar folktales, with such memorable titles as ‘Why Pigs Sniff the Earth’, ‘The Race’, etc. Though these stories are familiar, the story-teller's knack for injecting freshness into them is quite remarkable, and we enjoy them as fresh, delectable inventions with new twists. In ‘Why Pigs Sniff the Earth’, for instance, one might raise the moral question of why the pig should be the loser at the end when actually he is the upright one. However, these stories – like some of the questions that philosophy raises about life – have no answers. Sometimes the just are winners; at other times they are losers. Likewise, in some cases, the unjust clever person ‘wins’ and sometimes he receives his comeuppance. Thus, the lesson here is that tact and cleverness are virtues that must be upheld in the real world, for living is like a game of cards: sometimes one wins, at other times one loses. One's triumph or defeat most times is not determined by uprightness or how virtuous one might be, but by a pragmatic engagement with reality. Idealists may of course question these conclusions, and perhaps that too is the point of the stories: to compel us to reflect and question existential conundrums.

In the story, ‘The Race’, the narrative subscribes to the abiding belief that a successful man needs to be tactful in the way he relates with other people so as not to arouse jealousy in the less successful people.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a bold feminist who is not afraid to express her opinions and position on the issues of feminism. Her passion for the liberation of women is evident in her novels: Purple Hibiscus and Americanah. In the latter, she incorporates some of the ideas that she develops in Dear Ijeawele. One such idea is the creation of a female character (Ifemelu) who subverts the notion that it is male prerogative to initiate physical intimacy in a heterosexual relationship:

Though the young man at first is shocked at her boldness, he accepts her proposal and they kiss for the first time. A traditional man would see Ifemelu as morally lax, and may not want to continue the relationship with her. Adichie here is saying that women also are human beings with flesh and blood and feel the same things that men feel, so that it should not matter who initiates the move for the expression of physical love. This is a significant paradigm shift in gender matters.

It is still in her bid to create more awareness for gender equality that she wrote Dear Ijeawele which one can see as a sequel to her famous speech entitled: ‘We should all be Feminists’. Indeed, it is a sequel to the foregoing because it reinforces the basic ideas about gender inequality especially as women in Nigeria experience it. Her text therefore develops and discusses in details many of the points made in that speech. This sequel is a continuation of her famous speech because she believes that, though ‘we have evolved … our ideas about gender had not evolved’ (We Should All Be Feminists).

Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's response to some of the critical gender issues in Igbo (Nigerian) culture that the literary feminist movement in Nigeria has not been able to fully address.

The novel explores the stifling nature of polygamous marriage for women in a Muslim society. Here, marriage is seen as a Freudian prison. Society is highly stratified and conservative, and husbands are seen as lords and masters over their wives who must be subject to them according to Quaranic injunctions. Women aspire to marriage as the ultimate goal in their lives and they expend so much energy to keep it because marriage seems to be the only way by which they can earn respect and affirmation in their societies. Thus, the dream of every young woman is to get married at all costs and their greatest fear is to be divorced by their husbands.

This is a great malady, and it is portrayed in the lives of the wives, especially the first two wives of the central male figure, Ibrahim, in Razinat Mohammed's novel, The Travails of a First Wife. The title of the novel is unpretentious; perhaps in fact, even too literal. But it makes its point directly, unencumbered by needless artifice. Zarah, the first wife, from all indications is long suffering and should long have left her marriage. Her husband treats her badly, and ignores her deepest emotional and sexual needs. To make the situation even direr, Ibrahim marries two new and younger wives and brings them into their home. He has robust sexual relations with them to the dismay and anguish of Zarah. Unfortunately for Zarah she is also a barren and childless woman. The truth however is that she has a son for her husband that both of them for certain reasons refuse to identify with, and her womb has also been destroyed through several abortions that she does to save Ibrahim's name before their marriage such that now they have a marriage in which she is unable to conceive any more children.