Anthills of the Savannah

A novel set in the fictional African nation of Kangan in the late twentieth century, soon after independence from colonialism, published in 1987.

by Chinua Achebe

Synopsis
The story details the internal stresses that lead to the fall of an African military dictatorship led by His Excellency and the fates of two of his initially close friends.

    Events in History at the Time the Novel Was Written
    The Novel in Focus
    Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place


Born in 1930, in Ogidi in the state of Anambra, Nigeria, Chinua Achebe is the best known Anglophone African writer. Achebe attended an elite secondary school, Government College, Umuahia, during his high-school years. At 18, he joined the first set of students admitted to Nigeria's premier university, then called University College, Ibadan. After college, he taught high school for a short while, then joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Company, where he became the executive in charge of foreign services. Since leaving broadcasting, Achebe has been teaching at universities in Nigeria and the United States. He is the founding general editor of the African Writers Series (Heinemann and Greenwood Press) under which, since 1962, the most significant African writing in English and English translation has been published. In 1971, Achebe founded Okike, which has remained a front line African literary journal to the present day. In his own novels, Achebe has portrayed slices of African life, from colonial (Things Fall Apart [1958] and Arrow of God [1964]) to postcolonial times (No Longer at Ease [1960] and A Man of the People [1966]). In the 1970s, he produced short stories (Girls at War and Other Stories [1972]), poetry (Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems [1973]), and essays (Morning Yet on Creation Day [1975]). Achebe returned to the novel with Anthills of the Savannah. A mature work published two decades after his prior novel, Anthills deals with the internal turmoil of an African country after throwing off colonial rule.

For More Information
Achebe, Chinua. Anthills of the Savannah. New York: Anchor Books, 1987.
_____. The Trouble With Nigeria. Enugu: Fourth Dimension, 1983.
Ascherson, Neal. "Betrayal." New York Review of Books, 3 March 1988, 3-4, 6.
Fage, J. D. A History of Africa. London, Routledge, 1995.
Falola, Toyin. The History of Nigeria. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999.
Farah, Nuruddin. "A Tale of Tyranny." West Africa, 21 September 1987, 1, 828-31.
Lindfors, Bernth, ed. Conversations with Chinua Achebe. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.
Obiechina, Emmanuel. Language and Theme: Essays on African Literature. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1990.
_____. Emmanuel Obiechina to Joyce Moss, letter, 18 September 2002, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Sparrow, Fiona. "Reviews." World Literature Written in English 28, no. 1 (spring 1988): 58-61.
Stratton, Florence. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender. London: Routledge, 1994.