269
tunes of evangelism.” For Nwoye,
Christian hymns not only have
the “power to pluck at the silent
and dusty chords in the heart of
an Ibo man,” but seem to answer
“a vague and persistent question
that haunted his young soul.”The power of language
Asked why he chose to write in
English rather than his native Igbo,
Achebe replied that it would be
foolish not to use a language he had
spent a lifetime acquiring and one
that could be put to active use as
“a counterargument to colonization.”
Achebe maintained that written
Igbo, devised by the missionaries
at the turn of the century, was a
mix of dialects that had lost all the
rhythm and music of the spoken
language. The point is illustrated
in his novel when the white man’s
Igbo interpreter is mocked by
the local villagers for his different
dialect—his way of saying “myself”
translates as “my buttocks.”
Achebe followed Things Fall
Apart with two novels that form a
trilogy built around the country’s
turbulent half-century under British
rule. No Longer at Ease, set in the
period just before Nigeria gained
independence, tells the story ofOkonkwo’s grandson Obi, who
returns from university abroad and
struggles with ideals in a society
built on bribery and corruption.
Achebe then turns back the clock
in Arrow of God, to continue the
story of the destruction of Igbo
culture in the colonial years.
Described as the “father of
modern African literature,” Achebe
opened the door to African writing
in English. In an article in The New
Gong Magazine, columnist Henry
Chukwuemeka Onyema suggests
that Things Fall Apart’s “singular
achievement ... was that it told us
about ourselves through our own
eyes.” Onyema describes the 1960s
in Nigeria as a “literary ferment,” as
writers sought to define the newly
independent nation and to make
sense of its contradictions. Among
them was playwright and novelist
Wole Soyinka, who was awarded
the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature.Confronting oppression
Later generations of Nigerian
writers continued to grapple with
the aftermath of colonialism, civil
war, and cultural conflict. In 1991,
Ben Okri was awarded the Booker
Prize for The Famished Road, in
which a spirit-child faces down
death to become part of the lives of
real people. Women writers such as
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have
also found a voice engaging with
Nigeria’s turbulent political history
and exploring the place of women
in a male-dominated culture. In
Adichie’s debut novel, Purple
Hibiscus (2003), the narrator is
a 15-year-old girl struggling to
emerge from the repression of a
patriarchal Catholic upbringing.
Other writers have explored a wide
range of modern-day issues—such
as homosexuality, prostitution, and
environmental degradation—from
a Nigerian perspective. ■POSTWAR WRITING
An abominable religion has
settled among you. A man
can now leave his father and
his brothers. ... I fear for you;
I fear for the clan.
Things Fall ApartChinua Achebe
Born in 1930 in the small town
of Ogidi, southeast Nigeria, to
Protestant parents, Chinua
Achebe spoke Igbo at home
and English at school. He
graduated from University
College, Ibadan, in 1952, and
within 12 years had written
the three novels that were
to become the foundation of
his oeuvre. Achebe married
Christie Chinwe Okoli in 1961,
and they had four children.
An early career in radio
ended with the outbreak of
the Biafran War. Achebe went
on to teach in the US and
Nigeria, and wrote stories,
poetry, essays, and children’s
books. In 1990 a car crash left
him confined to a wheelchair
for the remainder of his life. In
1992 he became professor of
languages and literature at
Bard College, New York, and
in 2009 he moved to Brown
University, Rhode Island. In
2007 Achebe was awarded
the Man Booker International
Prize for fiction. He died in
March 2013 at 82.Other key works1960 No Longer at Ease
1964 Arrow of God
1966 A Man of the People
1987 Anthills of the SavannahUS_266-269_FallApart.indd 269 08/10/2015 13:09