The world lost an important voice with Chinua Achebe’s death. Critics consider the writer, born in Ogidi, Nigeria in 1930, one of the finest Nigerian novelists. Chinua Achebe eschewed trends in English literature and wrote by embracing the African oral tradition. (See the Chinua Achebe biography page from In Search of the Novel, Ten Novelists, for background on the author and his writing style.  The Ten Novels page provides a synopsis and reviews of Things Fall Apart.)

Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart asks readers to consider, that while people often resist change, what if  their whole way of living was suddenly threatened by a group of outsiders? Okonkwo, the protagonist of this work, faces the imminent influence of British values on his Nigerian community.

Anthony Appiah, Achebe’s friend, explains his view of the novel Things Fall Apart in the program Invitation to World Literature: “One of the things that Achebe has always said, is that part of what he thought the task of the novel was, was to create a usable past. Trying to give people a richly textured picture of what happened, not a sort of monotone bad Europeans, noble Africans, but a complicated picture in which mistakes are made on both sides.”

In Teaching Multicultural Literature, workshop 8, “Social Justice and Action,” author Joseph Bruchac talks about his friendship with Achebe and how Achebe influenced his writing. He says:

“I asked Chinua why he wrote that novel (Things Fall Apart). He said that when he was in college, he was forced to read a book called Mr. Johnson by an English writer named Joyce Cary. In that book, which takes place among the Ibo people, Mr. Johnson is a pathetic figure, an Ibo man who wants to be like an Englishman but can never achieve that level. He dresses like an Englishman, tries to walk and talk and act like an Englishman. And he fails utterly.

And Ibo culture is just a background of this, is seen as savage and dirty and primitive and of little worth. Chinua said, ‘I had to write Things Fall Apart. To represent my people as they really are. As full human beings.’ Not perfect, because his main character has a tragic flaw. But ‘as full human beings in their own right.’”