Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta. Novels would make up the bulk of the series, but it extended to poetry, anthologies, short stories, autobiographies, drama, non fiction, and oral traditions. Design Between 1962 and 1986 all the books in the African Writers Series were colour-coded: orange for fiction, blue for non-fiction, and green for poetry and drama. While this highlighted the different genres, all books in the series during this period were numbered to give a clear indication that they belonged to a collection of works by African writers. Some evolution in cover design did take place during these years. Between 1962 and 1965 a heavy black band was featured at the top of the covers, with a black-and-white illustration below. The black was then replaced by a solid orange block. Later a colophon was added that was intended to look like an Africanised version of Heinemann’s windmill logo. In 1971 George Hallett was employed to produce cover photography, which began to replace the use of illustrations. In 1986, the design was changed to appeal more in western markets. Orange was replaced by a white background with a boxed abstract image. In 1993, the was changed again to incorporate full-colour images. Reception The African Writers Series includes five winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature: Wole Soyinka (1986), Naguib Mahfouz (1988), Nadine Gordimer (1991), Doris Lessing (2007), and Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021). Books in the series have also won the Commonwealth Prize, the NOMA Award for African Writing, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and Guardian Fiction Prize. In 2002, at a celebration of Africa's 100 Best Books of the Twentieth Century, Heinemann was given a prize, as 12 of the titles chosen were from the series. Bibliography A definitive bibliography of the series was prepared by Nourdin Bejjit as part of his PhD research at the Open University and included in James Currey's book-length treatment of the series, with some additional information from Heinemann. Digitisation and relaunch In 2005 Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collection began to digitise the series, which was completed in 2009. It was then relaunched by Pearson Education in 2011, which began reissuing titles from the original list as 'Classics' and a number of new works. New titles included: The purple violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas (2011) Woman of the Aeroplanes by B. Kojo Laing (2011) Search Sweet Country by B. Kojo Laing (2011) The Lovers by Bessie Head (2011)