Things Fall Apart
Achebe showed the world what it looked like from the other side of colonialism. No other novel has done it with more precision or more sorrow.
The World Okonkwo Built
Chinua Achebe's 1958 debut novel follows Okonkwo, a proud and successful warrior in the Igbo village of Umuofia in late 19th-century Nigeria, as he struggles against the arrival of British missionaries and colonial administrators who dismantle everything his culture has built over centuries. Written as a direct response to condescending Western portrayals of Africa, Achebe's novel restored dignity and interiority to African characters and gave the continent a literary voice on its own terms. It has sold over 20 million copies and is the most widely read novel in African literature.
Reading Things Fall Apart
Atmosphere
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"When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.
"Chinua Achebe
Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart partly in response to Joyce Cary's 1939 novel Mister Johnson, which portrayed Africans as simple and childlike. Achebe wanted to write Africa from the inside and on its own terms.
The novel was rejected by several publishers before Heinemann accepted it in 1958. Heinemann subsequently launched the African Writers Series inspired by the book's success, which published hundreds of African authors over the following decades.