Achebe’s magnum opus, Things fall apart, depicts the life of Okonkwo, a leader and local wrestling champion in Umuofia – one of a fictional group of nine villages in Nigeria, inhabited by the Igbo people. It describes his family and personal history, the customs and society of the Igbo, and the influence of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on the Igbo community during the late nineteenth century.
He’s been described as the “father” of modern African literature, a brilliant writer and a universally acclaimed author. Nigerian-born Chinua Achebe passed away at the age of 82 on 21 March 2013 in Boston after a short illness. He was revered throughout the world for his depiction of life in Africa. He specifically wrote about the impact of colonialism on the continent and its aftermath, as well as political corruption and initiating democratic reforms.
Achebe was born in 1930, three decades before Nigeria achieved independence, and as a boy excelled at school. His parents converted to Christianity, his father becoming an Anglican religious teacher and travelling the region with his mother to preach and teach. Achebe won a scholarship for undergraduate studies at the University College (now the University of Ibadan), and, while he initially studied medicine, his fascination with world religions and traditional African cultures saw him switch to English, history and theology. After graduating, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service and soon moved to Lagos, where he met his future wife, Christie Okoli. He married her in 1961 and went on to have four children.
He published several novels in his lifetime, including No longer at ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A man of the people (1966), and Anthills of the savannah (1987). However, the novel that he will perhaps be best remembered for is Things fall apart (1958). Described as his magnum opus, its title was derived from the William Butler Yeats’ poem The second coming, and focused on the traditions of Igbo society in south-eastern Nigeria and the effects of colonialism. It sold more than eight million copies around the world and was translated into more than 50 languages making him the most translated African writer of all time.
Prof Sabelo Ndlovu, head of the Archie Mafeje Research Institute (AMRI), read the novel for his Cambridge School Examinations and agrees that it’s Achebe’s finest work. “It is in this novel that he revealed the vampiric arrival of empire in Africa using the case study of Igbo society. With titled men like Okonkwo falling apart, Prof Achebe gave a full literary portrait of the impact of colonialism and its transformation of African social formations,” he says.
Achebe with former South African president Nelson Mandela. Madiba said that Achebe had brought Africa to the rest of the world.
In May 1967 civil war broke out in Nigeria, which would have a profound effect on Achebe, who backed the losing rebellion. The University of Massachusetts offered Achebe a professorship in 1972, and he moved his family to the United States. He continued his research on perceptions of Africa in Western Europe and caused a huge controversy when he expressed his opinion that renowned author Joseph Conrad was a racist. Ndlovu said it is this type of thinking that had a great influence on his own work. “Using Igbo society, he revealed the painful passing away of the African pre-colonial world and the in-coming of colonialism. In my own work, I give Prof Chinua Achebe a dignified place, as he was a leading de-colonial thinker,” he says.
Achebe returned to Nigeria and had a short-lived career in politics. In 1990, he was involved in a car accident that left him paralysed from the waist down and in a wheelchair. He decided to move to the United States permanently. Remaining critical of the Nigerian government, he twice turned down the offer of the title Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic, once in 2004 from President Olusegun Obasanjo, and again in 2011 from President Goodluck Jonathan.
In June 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize and, in 2010, The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. In October 2012, Achebe’s publishers, Penguin Books, released There was a country: A personal history of Biafra. It detailed his memoirs during the Nigerian civil war and would prove to be the last publication during his lifetime. Nelson Mandela once said that in the company of Chinua Achebe’s novels “prison walls fell down”.
Ndlovu says while there are doubts as to where Africa goes next, Achebe’s work is proof that things have not quite yet fallen apart. “His legacy is even more important for the future generations because of the current crisis of imagination. There is scarcity of the future, but from Prof Achebe’s finest fictive imagination we have somewhere to begin,” he says.
