Summary
Through his fiction and non-fiction works, Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has sought to repair the damage done to the continent of Africa and its people as a result of European colonization. This is best exemplified in his most famous novel “Things Fall Apart,” one of the first African novels written in English to achieve national acclaim.
Set in the 1890s, the novel deals with the impact of British colonialism on the traditional Igbo society in Nigeria. Published in 1958 — just two years before the end of a century of British rule in Nigeria — the novel celebrated its 50th anniversary of publication in 2008. “An Evening with Chinua Achebe” featured the author reading from his celebrated work.
“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama
“African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.
With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
One of Chinua Achebe’s many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism.
First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book resists the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden.
Instead, Achebe portrays a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence.
His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man.
The son of a charming ne’er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father’s weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children.
He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy:
“Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.”
And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic.
He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father.
Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.
Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile.
And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever.
Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. —Alix Wilber
Review
Praise for Chinua Achebe
“A true classic of world literature…A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” — Barack Obama
“A magical writer—one of the greatest of the twentieth century.” —Margaret Atwood
“African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison
“Chinua Achebe has shown that a mind that observes clearly but feels deeply enough to afford laughter may be more wise than all the politicians and journalists.” —Time
“Chinua Achebe is gloriously gifted with the magic of an ebullient, generous, great talent.” —Nadine Gordimer
“Achebe’s influence should go on and on . . . teaching and reminding that all humankind is one.” —The Nation
“The father of African literature in the English language and undoubtedly one of the most important writers of the second half of the twentieth century.” —Caryl Phillips, The Observer
“We are indebted to Achebe for reminding us that art has social and moral dimension—a truth often obscured.” —Chicago Tribune
“He is one of the few writers of our time who has touched us with a code of values that will never be ironic.” —Michael Ondaatje
“For so many readers around the world, it is Chinua Achebe who opened up the magic casements of African fiction.” —Kwame Anthony Appiah
“[Achebe] is one of world literature’s great humane voices.” —Times Literary Supplement
“Achebe is one of the most distinguished artists to emerge from the West African cultural renaissance of the post-war world.” —The Sunday Times (London)
“[Achebe is] a powerful voice for cultural decolonization.” —The Village Voice
“The power and majesty of Chinua Achebe’s work has, literally, opened the world to generations of readers. He is an ambassador of art, and a profound recorder of the human condition.” —Michael Dorris
From the Publisher
This is Chinua Achebe’s classic novel, with more than two million copies sold since its first U.S. publication in 1969. Combining a richly African story with the author’s keen awareness of the qualities common to all humanity, Achebe here shows that he is “gloriously gifted, with the magic of an ebullient, generous, great talent.” — Nadine Gordimer
About the Author
Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan.
His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad.
From 1972 to 1975, and again from 1987 to 1988, Mr. Achebe was Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and also for one year at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.
Cited in the London Sunday Times as one of the “1,000 Makers of the Twentieth Century” for defining “a modern African literature that was truly African” and thereby making “a major contribution to world literature,” Chinua Achebe has published novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books.
His volume of poetry, Christmas in Biafra, written during the Biafran War, was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, Arrow of Godwon the New Statesman—Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize.
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece, has been published in fifty different languages and has sold more than two million copies in the United States since its original publication in 1959.
Mr. Achebe has received numerous honors from around the world, including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as more than thirty honorary doctorates from universities in England, Scotland, the United States, Canada, Nigeria, and South Africa.
He is also the recipient of Nigeria’s highest honor for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Order of Merit, and of Germany’s Friedenstreis des Beutschen Buchhandels for 2002.
Mr. Achebe lives with his wife in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where they teach at Bard College. They have four children and three grandchildren.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino.
He was called the Cat because his back would never touch the earth. It was this man that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights.
The drums beat and the flutes sang and the spectators held their breath. Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Every nerve and every muscle stood out on their arms, on their backs and their thighs, and one almost heard them stretching to breaking point. In the end, Okonkwo threw the Cat.
That was many years ago, twenty years or more, and during this time Okonkwo’s fame had grown like a bush-fire in the harmattan.
He was tall and huge, and his bushy eyebrows and wide nose gave him a very severe look. He breathed heavily, and it was said that, when he slept, his wives and children in their houses could hear him breathe.
When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often.
He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful men.
He had had no patience with his father.
Unoka, for that was his father’s name, had died ten years ago.
In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow.
If any money came his way, and it seldom did, he immediately bought gourds of palm-wine, called round his neighbors and made merry. He always said that whenever he saw a dead man’s mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one’s lifetime. Unoka was, of course, a debtor, and he owed every neighbor some money, from a few cowries to quite substantial amounts.
He was tall but very thin and had a slight stoop. He wore a haggard and mournful look except when he was drinking or playing on his flute. He was very good on his flute, and his happiest moments were the two or three moons after the harvest when the village musicians brought down their instruments, hung above the fireplace. Unoka would play with them, his face beaming with blessedness and peace. Sometimes another village would ask Unoka’s band and their dancing egwugwu to come and stay with them and teach them their tunes.
They would go to such hosts for as long as three or four markets, making music and feasting. Unoka loved the good fare and the good fellowship, and he loved this season of the year, when the rains had stopped and the sun rose every morning with dazzling beauty.
And it was not too hot either, because the cold and dry harmattan wind was blowing down from the north. Some years the harmattan was very severe and a dense haze hung on the atmosphere. Old men and children would then sit round log fires, warming their bodies. Unoka loved it all, and he loved the first kites that returned with the dry season, and the children who sang songs of welcome to them.
He would remember his own childhood, how he had often wandered around looking for a kite sailing leisurely against the blue sky. As soon as he found one he would sing with his whole being, welcoming it back from its long, long journey, and asking it if it had brought home any lengths of cloth.
That was years ago, when he was young.
Unoka, the grown-up, was a failure.
He was poor and his wife and children had barely enough to eat.
People laughed at him because he was a loafer, and they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back.
But Unoka was such a man that he always succeeded in borrowing more, and piling up his debts.
One day a neighbor called Okoye came in to see him. He was reclining on a mud bed in his hut playing on the flute. He immediately rose and shook hands with Okoye, who then unrolled the goatskin which he carried under his arm, and sat down. Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk.
“I have kola,” he announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to his guest.
“Thank you. He who brings kola brings life. But I think you ought to break it,” replied Okoye, passing back the disc.
“No, it is for you, I think,” and they argued like this for a few moments before Unoka accepted the honor of breaking the kola.
Okoye, meanwhile, took the lump of chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big toe.
As he broke the kola, Unoka prayed to their ancestors for life and health, and for protection against their enemies. When they had eaten they talked about many things: about the heavy rains which were drowning the yams, about the next ancestral feast and about the impending war with the village of Mbaino.
Unoka was never happy when it came to wars.
He was in fact a coward and could not bear the sight of blood.
And so he changed the subject and talked about music, and his face beamed. He could hear in his mind’s ear the blood-stirring and intricate rhythms of the ekwe and the udu and the ogene, and he could hear his own flute weaving in and out of them, decorating them with a colorful and plaintive tune. The total effect was gay and brisk, but if one picked out the flute as it went up and down and then broke up into short snatches, one saw that there was sorrow and grief there.
Okoye was also a musician.
He played on the ogene.
But he was not a failure like Unoka.
He had a large barn full of yams and he had three wives.
And now he was going to take the Idemili title, the third highest in the land. It was a very expensive ceremony and he was gathering all his resources together. That was in fact the reason why he had come to see Unoka. He cleared his throat and began:
“Thank you for the kola. You may have heard of the title I intend to take shortly.”
Having spoken plainly so far, Okoye said the next half a dozen sentences in proverbs. Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. Okoye was a great talker and he spoke for a long time, skirting round the subject and then hitting it finally.
In short, he was asking Unoka to return the two hundred cowries he had borrowed from him more than two years before.
As soon as Unoka understood what his friend was driving at, he burst out laughing.
He laughed loud and long and his voice rang out clear as the ogene, and tears stood in his eyes. His visitor was amazed, and sat speechless. At the end, Unoka was able to give an answer between fresh outbursts of mirth.
“Look at that wall,” he said, pointing at the far wall of his hut, which was rubbed with red earth so that it shone. “Look at those lines of chalk;” and Okoye saw groups of short perpendicular lines drawn in chalk. There were five groups, and the smallest group had ten lines. Unoka had a sense of the dramatic and so he allowed a pause, in which he took a pinch of snuff and sneezed noisily, and then he continued:
“Each group there represents a debt to someone, and each stroke is one hundred cowries. You see, I owe that man a thousand cowries. But he has not come to wake me up in the morning for it. I shall pay, you, but not today.
Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
I shall pay my big debts first.”
And he took another pinch of snuff, as if that was paying the big debts first.
Okoye rolled his goatskin and departed.
When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was heavily in debt.
Any wonder then that his son Okonkwo was ashamed of him?
Fortunately, among these people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father.
Okonkwo was clearly cut out for great things.
He was still young but he had won fame as the greatest wrestler in the nine villages.
He was a wealthy farmer and had two barns full of yams, and had just married his third wife.
To crown it all he had taken two titles and had shown incredible prowess in two inter-tribal wars.
And so although Okonkwo was still young, he was already one of the greatest men of his time.
Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered.
As the elders said, “if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.”
Okonkwo had clearly washed his hands and so he ate with kings and elders.
And that was how he came to look after the doomed lad who was sacrificed to the village of Umuofia by their neighbors to avoid war and bloodshed.
The ill-fated lad was called Ikemefuna.
Chapter Two
Okonkwo had just blown out the palm-oil lamp and stretched himself on his bamboo bed when he heard the ogene of the town crier piercing the still night air. Gome, gome, gome, gome, boomed the hollow metal.
Then the crier gave his message, and at the end of it beat his instrument again.
And this was the message:
Every man of Umuofia was asked to gather at the market place tomorrow morning. Okonkwo wondered what was amiss, for he knew certainly that something was amiss. He had discerned a clear overtone of tragedy in the crier’s voice, and even now he could still hear it as it grew dimmer and dimmer in the distance.
The night was very quiet.
It was always quiet except on moonlight nights.
Darkness held a vague terror for these people, even the bravest among them.
Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits.
Dangerous animals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark.
A snake was never called by its name at night, because it would hear.
It was called a string.
And so on this particular night as the crier’s voice was gradually swallowed up in the distance, silence returned to the world, a vibrant silence made more intense by the universal trill of a million million forest insects.
On a moonlight night it would be different.
The happy voices of children playing in open fields would then be heard. And perhaps those not so young would be playing in pairs in less open places, and old men and women would remember their youth. As the Ibo say: “When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.”
But this particular night was dark and silent.
And in all the nine villages of Umuofia a town crier with his ogene asked every man to be present tomorrow morning.
Okonkwo on his bamboo bed tried to figure out the nature of the emergency–war with a neighboring clan? That seemed the most likely reason, and he was not afraid of war. He was a man of action, a man of war. Unlike his father he could stand the look of blood.
In Umuofia’s latest war he was the first to bring home a human head.
That was his fifth head; and he was not an old man yet.
On great occasions such as the funeral of a village celebrity he drank his palm-wine from his first human head.
In the morning the market place was full. There must have been about ten thousand men there, all talking in low voices.
At last Ogbuefi Ezeugo stood up in the midst of them and bellowed four times,
“Umuofia kwenu“, and on each occasion he faced a different direction and seemed to push the air with a clenched fist.
And ten thousand men answered “Yaal” each time.
Then there was perfect silence.
Ogbuefi Ezeugo was a powerful orator and was always chosen to speak on such occasions.
He moved his hand over his white head and stroked his white beard. He then adjusted his cloth, which was passed under his right arm-pit and tied above his left shoulder.
“Umuofia kwenu”, he bellowed a fifth time, and the crowd yelled in answer.
And then suddenly like one possessed he shot out his left hand and pointed in the direction of Mbaino, and said through gleaming white teeth firmly clenched: “Those sons of wild animals have dared to murder a daughter of Umuofia.”
He threw his head down and gnashed his teeth, and allowed a murmur of suppressed anger to sweep the crowd. When he began again, the anger on his face was gone and in its place a sort of smile hovered, more terrible and more sinister than the anger.
And in a clear unemotional voice he told Umuofia how their daughter had gone to market at Mbaino and had been killed.
That woman, said Ezeugo, was the wife of Ogbuefi Udo, and he pointed to a man who sat near him with a bowed head.
The crowd then shouted with anger and thirst for blood.
Many others spoke, and at the end it was decided to follow the normal course of action.
An ultimatum was immediately dispatched to Mbaino asking them to choose between war on the one hand, and on the other the offer of a young man and a virgin as compensation.
Umuofia was feared by all its neighbors.
It was powerful in war and in magic, and its priests and medicine men were feared in all the surrounding country.
Its most potent war-medicine was as old as the clan itself.
Nobody knew how old.
But on one point there was general agreement–the active principle in that medicine had been an old woman with one leg.
In fact, the medicine itself was called agadi-nwayi, or old woman.
It had its shrine in the centre of Umuofia, in a cleared spot.
And if anybody was so foolhardy as to pass by the shrine after dusk he was sure to see the old woman hopping about…
Worship Song of the Day
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