This novel centres on Nnu Ego, an Igbo woman from Ibuza , Delta State, Nigeria. She is the daughter of Chief Nwokocha Agbadi and his mistress Ona. The night she is conceived, Agbadi's first wife (Agunwa) dies of shock because of Ona's loud moans. A slavewoman who is buried with Agunwa promises to come back as Agbadi's daughter. Nnu Ego ("20 bags of cowries") is as light-skinned as the slave.
Nnu Ego marries Amatokwu as a virgin but has no child for him. Amatokwu takes another wife who bears children. Eventually, the marriage crumbles and Nnu Ego returns to her father's house.
She later marries Nnaife Owulum by proxy and goes to him in Lagos. When her first son (Ngozi) dies , she attempts to jump into the lagoon but is restrained. She later bears a son Oshiaju ("the bush has rejected this") and 8 other children (out of which 2 die). Along the line , Nnaife has children by his late brother's wives, Adaku and Adankwo. He also marries 16-year-old Okpo. Nnaife has 12 children in all - 7 from Nnu Ego, 2 from Adaku, 1 from Adankwo and 2 from Okpo.
Nnaife expects Oshiaju to stop schooling after excelling in his Cambridge Certificate exams and take over the family responsibilities from him but Oshiaju gets a scholarship to further his education in the United States. Later on, Nnu Ego's daughter Kehinde wants to marry a Yoruba man (Ladipo) against Nnaife's wishes. Nnaife matchets Ladipo's relatives and is jailed for a while. Nnu Ego later dies on a road, neglected by her children who later organise an expensive burial.
The novel is a satire which bears out the Yoruba proverb " Having too many children brings much poverty and sorrow".
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