Things Fall Apart (23 page)

Chinua Achebe is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. He was, for over fifteen years, the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He is the author of five novels, two short story collections, and numerous other books. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize. He lives with his wife in Providence, Rhode Island.

Anthills of the Savannah

The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories

Things Fall Apart

No Longer at Ease

Chike and the River

A Man of the People

Arrow of God

Girls at War and Other Stories

Beware Soul Brother

Morning Yet on Creation Day

The Trouble with Nigeria

The Flute

The Drum

Home and Exile

Hopes and Impediments

How the Leopard Got His Claws (with John Iroaganachi)

Winds of Change: Modern Short Stories from Black Africa (coeditor)

African Short Stories (editor, with C. L. Innes)

Another Africa (with Robert Lyons)

ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH

In the fictional West African nation Kangan, newly independent of British rule, the hopes and dreams of democracy have been quashed by a fierce military dictatorship. Chris Oriko is a member of the cabinet of the president for life, one of his oldest friends. When the president is charged with censoring the oppositionist editor of the state-run newspaper—another childhood friend—Chris’s loyalty and ideology are put to the test. The fate of Kangan hangs in the balance as tensions rise and a devious plot is set in motion to silence the firebrand critic.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-26045-9

ARROW OF GOD

Ezeulu, the chief priest of several Nigerian villages, is a prominent member of the Igbo people. So prominent, in fact, that he is invited to join the British colonial administration. But when he refuses to be a “white man’s chief” and is thrown in jail, Ezeulu’s influence begins to wane, as the resentful decisions he makes from prison have adverse effects on his people. As Christian missionaries flood Ezeulu’s villages, Western culture may very well unravel the traditions he has spent his life protecting.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-01480-9

THE EDUCATION OF A BRITISH-PROTECTED CHILD
Essays

Chinua Achebe’s characteristically eloquent and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. From a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria to considerations on the African-American diaspora, from a glimpse into his extraordinary family life and his thoughts on the potent symbolism of President Obama’s election—this charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise collection is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.

Essays/978-0-307-47367-7

GIRLS AT WAR
And Other Stories

Here we read of an ambitious farmer who is suddenly shunned by his village when a madman exacts his humiliating revenge; a young nanny who is promised an education by her well-to-do employers, only to be cruelly cheated out of it; and in three fiercely observed stories about the Nigerian civil war, we are confronted with the economic, ethnic, cultural, and religious tensions that continue to rack modern Africa.

Fiction/Short Stories/978-0-385-41896-6

HOME AND EXILE

More personally revealing than anything Achebe has written,
Home and Exile
is a major statement on the importance of stories as real sources of power, especially for those whose stories have traditionally been told by outsiders. In three elegant essays, Achebe seeks to rescue African culture from narratives written about it by Europeans. Looking through the prism of his experiences as a student in English schools in Nigeria, he provides devastating examples of European cultural imperialism. He examines the impact that his novel
Things Fall Apart
had on efforts to reclaim Africa’s story. And he argues for the importance of writing and living the African experience because, he believes, Africa needs stories told by Africans.

Essays/978-0-385-72133-2

HOPES AND IMPEDIMENTS
Selected Essays

In
Hopes and Impediments
, Chinua Achebe considers the place of literature and art in our society. This collection of essays spans his writing and lectures over the course of his career, from his groundbreaking and provocative essay on Joseph Conrad and
Heart of Darkness
to his assessments of the novelist’s role as a teacher and of the truths of fiction. Achebe reveals the impediments that still stand in the way of open, equal dialogue between Africans and Europeans, between blacks and whites, but also instills us with hope that they will soon be overcome.

Essays/978-0-385-41479-1

A MAN OF THE PEOPLE

Chief Nanga—the powerful but corrupt minister of culture— comes to visit the school where his former student Odili is now a teacher. But Odili soon sees that Nanga is not the man he pretends to be … and eventually decides that he must run for office himself, with disastrous consequences. Perhaps Achebe’s most political novel,
A Man of the People
is a story of corruption and expectations, deceit and hope. Elegantly fusing the worlds of the traditional village and the modern city,
A Man of the People
brings together multiple identities of a country leaving behind its colonial past, while trying to make its way into an independent future.

Fiction/978-0-385-08616-5

NO LONGER AT EASE

When Obi Okonkwo—grandson of Okonkwo, the main character of
Things Fall Apart
—returns to Nigeria from England in the 1950s, his foreign education separates him from his African roots. He’s become a part of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. Forced to choose between traditional values and the demands of a changing world, he finds himself trapped between the expectations of his family, his village, and the larger society around him.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-47455-9

THINGS FALL APART

Things Fall Apart
tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo’s world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-47454-2

ALSO AVAILABLE
Collected Poems
, 978-1-4000-7658-1

ANCHOR BOOKS
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
www.randomhouse.com