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LONDON - Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe won the 2007 Man Booker
International Prize for fiction Wednesday, beating such celebrated
nominees as Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan. The
$120,000 prize is awarded every two years for a body of fiction. (AP,
Wed Jun 13, 2007)
(1930 - )
The novelist Chinua Achebe,
a fine stylish and an astute social critic, is one of the best-known African writers in
the West and his novels are often assigned in university courses.
Nigerian novelist and poet, whose works explore the impact of European culture on
African society. Achebe's unsentimental, often ironic books vividly convey the traditions
and speech of the Ibo people. Born in Ogidi, Nigeria, Achebe was educated at the
University College of Ibadan (now the University of Ibadan).
He subsequently taught at various universities in Nigeria and the United States. Achebe
wrote his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), partly in response to what he saw as
inaccurate characterizations of Africa and Africans by British authors. The book describes
the effects on Ibo society of the arrival of European colonizers and missionaries in the
late 1800s.
Achebe's subsequent novels No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the
People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987) are set in Africa and describe the
struggles of the African people to free themselves from European political influences.
During Nigeria's tumultuous political period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Achebe
became politically active. Most of his literary works of this time address Nigeria's
internal conflict (see Nigeria, Federal Republic of: Civil War). These books include the
volumes of poetry Beware, Soul Brother (1971) and Christmas in Biafra (1973), the
short-story collection Girls at War (1972), and the children's book How the Leopard Got
His Claws (1972).
In 1971 Achebe helped to found the influential literary magazine Okike. His other
writings include the essay collections Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975), which he later
expanded under the title Hopes and Impediments (1988); and The Trouble with Nigeria
(1983).
"Achebe, Chinua," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 96 Encyclopedia. (c)
1993-1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. (c) Funk & Wagnalls Corporation.
All rights reserved.
 The
Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays
Click to order via
AmazonHardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: Knopf (October 6, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307272559
ISBN-13: 978-0307272553
From the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart and winner of the
Man Booker International Prize comes a new collection of autobiographical
essays—his first new book in more than twenty years.
Chinua Achebe’s characteristically measured and nuanced voice is everywhere
present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. In a preface, he
discusses his historic visit to his Nigerian homeland on the occasion of the
fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart, the
story of his tragic car accident nearly twenty years ago, and the potent
symbolism of President Obama’s election. In “The Education of a
British-Protected Child,” Achebe gives us a vivid portrait of growing up in
colonial Nigeria and inhabiting its “middle ground,” recalling both his
happy memories of reading novels in secondary school and the harsher truths
of colonial rule. In “Spelling Our Proper Name,” Achebe considers the
African-American diaspora, meeting and reading Langston Hughes and James
Baldwin, and learning what it means not to know “from whence he came.” The
complex politics and history of Africa figure in “What Is Nigeria to Me?,”
“Africa’s Tarnished Name,” and “Politics and Politicians of Language in
African Literature.” And Achebe’s extraordinary family life comes into view
in “My Dad and Me” and “My Daughters,” where we observe the effect of
Christian missionaries on his father and witness the culture shock of
raising “brown” children in America.
Charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise,
The Education of a British-Protected Child is an indispensable addition
to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre. |
|  Early
Achebe
Click to order via
Amazon
by Bernth Lindfors
Paperback: 278 pages
Publisher: Africa World Press, Inc.; First edition (June 22, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1592217036
ISBN-13: 978-1592217038
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
Early Achebe deals with the essays, stories, and groundbreaking novels
Chinua Achebe published between 1951 and 1966 during the first phase of the
writer's long and distinguished literary career. Lindfors, a longstanding
and renowned scholar and critic of African literature, demonstrates vividly
the pervasive influence the subject's early writing had not only on fellow
Nigerian authors but also on teachers and critics of African literature both
on the continent and abroad. The book concludes with a previously
unpublished lecture by Achebe titled "The Writer and the African Revolution"
delivered at The University of Texas at Austin in November 1969. |
|
  Another
Africa
Click to order via Amazon
Essay and Poems by Chinua Achebe
Photographs by Robert Lyons
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Published: October 1998
From The Publisher:
Another Africa is a book that
fuses photographs, poetry, and text to create a view of present-day Africa
that moves beyond the stereotypes commonly held by most westerners: an
open-air ethnographic museum, a continent in constant turmoil, a vast
expanse of beautiful sand dunes and tropical savannas where herds of
wildlife roam. This work peels away myths to explore the complexity,
diversity, and human dimensions of a place called Africa--one that
celebrates the commonplace and exotic simultaneously. The photographs are
highly subjective, a personal investigation that reflects the sensibilities,
formal concerns, and the ongoing engagement of the photographer in this part
of the world.
With the brilliant
Chinua Achebe -- a
Nigerian--contributing his poems and an essay, the book takes on a further
and critical dimension. He presents a concise view of Africa today,
including the individual and political issues facing its countries. He deals
with Africa on its own terms--from within, not from an outsider's
perspective.
|
  Things Fall Apart
Click to order via AmazonPublisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: September 1994
Format: Trade Cloth & Hardcover
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 eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial
life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches 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 |
  No Longer at Ease
Click to order via AmazonPublisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: September 1994
The story of a man whose foreign education has separated him from his
African roots and made him parts of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds
repugnant. More than thirty years after it was first written, this novel
remains a brilliant statement on the challenges still facing African
society.
|
  Arrow of God
Click to order via AmazonFormat: Trade Paper
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: September 1975
Set in the Ibo heartland of eastern Nigeria, one of Africa's best-known
writers describes the conflict between old and new in its most poignant
aspect: the personal struggle between father and son. |
  A Man of the People
Click to order via AmazonFormat: Trade Paper
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: September 1975
By the renowned author of Things Fall Apart, this novel
foreshadows the Nigerian coups of 1966 and shows the color and vivacity as
well as the violence and corruption of a society making its own way between
the two worlds.
|
  Beware, Soul Brother
Click to order via AmazonFormat: Trade Paper
Publisher: Heinemann
Date Published: November 1990 URL: |
 Girls
at War
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (August 1, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385418965
Twelve stories by the internationally renowned novelist which recreate
with energy and authenticity the major social and political issues that
confront contemporary Africans on a daily basis. |
Books and Date Originally Published
Girls at War
Things Fall Apart, 1958
No Longer at Ease, 1960
The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories, 1962
Arrow of God, 1964
A Man of the People, 1966
Chike and the River, 1966
Beware, Soul-Brother, and Other Poems, 1971
How the Leopard Got His Claws (with John Iroaganachi), 1972
Girls at War, 1973
Christmas at Biafra, and Other Poems, 1973
Morning Yet on Creation Day, 1975
The Flute, 1975
The Drum, 1978
Don't Let Him Die: An Anthology of Memorial Poems for Christofer Okigbo (editor with Dubem
Okafor), 1978
Aka Weta: An Anthology of Igbo Poetry (co-editor), 1982
The Trouble With Nigeria, 1984
African Short Stories, 1984
Anthills of the Savannah, 1988
Hopes and Impediments, 1988
Related Links
LTHS & RBHS Engaged Learning Projects, Illinois. USA
http://collaboratory.nunet.net/goals2000/eddy/Achebe/Resources.html
Women in Achebe's World discusses women's roles (or lack there of) in
Achebe's novels. See the following web site to learn
http://www.uga.edu/~womanist/1995/mezu.html
Chinua Achebe biography by Ezenwa-Ohaeto
 The first biography of the
great Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe
"This pioneering biography draws upon a wealth of printed and oral sources to
produce a vivid record of the life and times of Africa's most influential novelist.
Ezenwa-Ohaeto is Achebe's Boswell; nothing of importance, large or small, seems to escape
him."
-- Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas
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