ACHEBE, Chinua
Nigerian novelist (born 1930)
THINGS FALL APART (1958) Achebe's best known novel, is a story of the people of Umuofia on the river Niger, and especially of Okonkwo, a rich and headstrong elder. To British readers the period seems early Victorian; to the men and women of Umuofia it would have no date, it would be part of the gentle continuum of existence. Their lives depend on the harmony between human beings and spirits, and that is preserved by a precise set of rituals and beliefs, established by precedent, explained by folk-tale and so familiar that instead of constricting the soul they liberate it. Okonkwo wins respect among his people by a magnificent wrestling-throw when he is 18, and keeps it by his hard work as a farmer, his love for the land. Then, by accident, he kills a relative, and is forced by custom to live out of the village for seven years. While he is away Christian missionaries come. They speak through interpreters, understand nothing of the people's beliefs and are followed by white commissioners whose laws destroy the society they were devised to 'civilise'. Achebe's points are blunt, and (for ex-colonialist) shamingly unanswerable. But his novel's main fascination is not political but social. External observers, however sophisticated their cameras or meticulous their anthropological methods, can only describe the surface of timeless, tribal societies: they report and explain events. Achebe, by contrast, uses a series of direct, uncomplicated scenes, reverberant as poetry, to reveal his people's souls.
Achebe's other novels are No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God and Anthills of the Savannah. Chike and the River is a children's book, sweet as a folk-tale.
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A Man of the People (a satirical, bitter farce about what happens when white imperialists leave and black politicians set up a state on 'western' lines).
To Things Fall Apart : Janet Lewis, The Trial of Sören Kvist I.B. Singer, Satan in Goray Amos Tutuola, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (making a denser, more Homeric use of Nigerian folk-styles)
To Achebe's later, and politically much more savage work : David Caute, News from Nowhere V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief - in a more hilarious but not less bleak mood
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