Chinua Achebe
1 book analyzed
Biography
Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) was born in Ogidi, Nigeria, to a Christian teacher father — he was Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, raised in the mission church but surrounded by Igbo traditional culture. He attended Government College Umuahia and then University College Ibadan, where he read English literature including Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The encounter was formative and enraging. He later wrote: 'I went to Conrad's novel and I just could not believe that I as an intelligent human being was expected to take my hat off to that, to say this is wonderful literature.' He wrote Things Fall Apart while working at the Nigerian Broadcasting Service in Lagos, completing it in 1958 — two years before Nigerian independence in 1960. He did not write the novel to explain Africa to the West; he wrote it to give Africans a novel about themselves, in their terms, by their own writer. The novel has sold over 20 million copies and been translated into 57 languages.