A novel set among an Igbo (Ibo) tribe in mainland Nigeria between 1850 and 1900; published in 1958.
by Chinua Achebe
Synopsis
Christian missionaries to Nigeria disrupt traditional Igbo life and drive one village leader, Okonkwo, to suicide.
Events in History at the Time the Novel Was Written
The Novel in Focus
Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place
Chinua Achebe was born in 1930 in eastern Nigeria, the son of devout Christian parents. He was baptized Albert Chinualumogu, but dropped this Victorian name when he began his studies. At the university in Nigeria, his frustrations with some of the narrow or distorted portrayals of Africa in European novels (specifically Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson) motivated him to write Things Fall Apart. Also motivating Achebe was a personal reality. After World War II, many Nigerians sought a reconciliation with their past, which they had abandoned for Christianity and the industrialization brought by Europeans to the British colonies in West Africa. Although Achebe had spoken Igbo, not English, as a child, he and his family celebrated Christian, not Igbo, festivals. His writing of Things Fall Apart when he reached manhood was Achebe's "act of atonement with [his] past, the ritual return and homage of a prodigal son" (Achebe, Morning Yet on Creation Day, p. 123).
For More Information
Achebe, Chinua. Morning Yet on Creation Day. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1975.
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1959.
Allen, Walter. "New Novels." New Statesman 55 (June 21, 1958): 814-15.
Emenyonu, Ernest. The Rise of the Igbo Novel. Ibadan, Nigeria: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Ezera, Kalu. Constitutional Developments in Nigeria. London: Cambridge University Press, 1960.
Killam, G. D. Africa in English Fiction. Ibadan, Nigeria: Oxford University Press, 1968.
Okoye, Emmanuel Meziemadu. The Traditional Religion and its Encounter with Christianity in Achebe's Novels. Bern: Peter Lang, 1987.
Wren, Robert. Achebe's World: The Historical and Cultural Context of the Novels. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1980.
Literature and Its Times © 1997 Joyce Moss and George Wilson © 2007 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
