becomes managing director in 1975. 1972 – Chinua Achebe leaves his position following the publication of his short story collection Girls At War as the hundredth book in the series. Sambrook, Currey, Higo and Chakava take over editorial duties collectively with the support of Akin Thomas, editorial director of HEB Nigeria. 1983 – Heinemann Group is taken over for the first time and goes through a series of takeovers in the coming years. 1984 – James Currey steps down after new management reduces new publications to only one or two a year. Of the 270 titles in the series, 15 are put out of print. 1986 – the series is relaunched by Vicky Unwin, who targets the western academic market due to the drop in spending in the African educational market. 1988 – Keith Sambrook steps down. 1992 – Caroline Avens begins to oversee the series, reducing the backlist and starting to publish more new authors. 1993 – Adewale Maja-Pearce appointed general editor. 1994 – Abdulrazak Gurnah appointed as editorial advisor. 2002 – Only 70 of the over 300 titles in the series remain in print. 2003 – Heinemann announces no new titles would be added to the series. By 2008 only 64 titles remain in print. Content The African Writers Series reissued paperback editions of works previously only available as more expensive hardbacks, translated books that had been published in other languages, and published the first works of unknown writers. The decision to reissue paperback editions of English language hardbacks followed the early success of Things Fall Apart and continued for many years. But it became clear very quickly that there were not enough works in English, so translations began to be made from French of works by Ferdinand Oyono, Mongo Beti and others. This was followed by translations from Portuguese, Zulu, Swahili, Acholi, Sesotho, Afrikaans, Luganda, and Arabic. At the same time, they published new authors. This started with Ngũgĩ, who helped to expand the reach of the series into East Africa. This approach provided opportunities for authors from across most of Africa. More than 80 titles published in the series were by Nigerian writers, who were followed by South Africans, Kenyans, Ghanaians, and Zimbabweans. In the first two decades, nearly all were men and it was only in the 1990s that books by women began to appear regularly. Some exceptions to this are early books by Flora