Chinua Achebe
The novelist whose first book gave modern African literature its foundational voice and reshaped how the world read the colonial encounter.
- Born
- 1930
- Died
- 2013
- Nationality
- Nigerian
- Genres
- Fiction, Essays, Poetry
Biography
Born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe in Ogidi, in south-eastern Nigeria, Achebe grew up between the Igbo traditions of his community and the Christian faith of his parents. That doubled inheritance would become the central tension of his fiction.
He studied at University College, Ibadan, and worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation before publishing Things Fall Apart in 1958. The novel, which follows the rise and fall of Okonkwo in the years of colonial arrival, has since sold millions of copies and been translated into dozens of languages.
Across novels, essays and poems, Achebe argued that Africans must tell their own stories. His 1975 lecture on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness remains one of the most cited critical essays of the twentieth century.
Major Works
- 1958Things Fall ApartThe first of the African Trilogy and his most widely read work.
- 1960No Longer at EaseA grandson of Okonkwo navigates corruption in late-colonial Lagos.
- 1964Arrow of GodA chief priest confronts the limits of his power under British rule.
- 1966A Man of the PeopleA satire of post-independence politics.
- 1987Anthills of the SavannahA late novel on power, friendship and the fragile state.
Influence
As editor of the African Writers Series, Achebe helped bring a generation of writers into print, from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o to Buchi Emecheta.
Legacy
His insistence that literature must restore dignity to those history had narrated from the outside continues to shape writers across the world.
Related Authors
Virginia Woolf
British · 1882–1941
Modernist novelist, essayist and co-founder of the Hogarth Press, whose experiments with consciousness changed the shape of the novel.
James Baldwin
American · 1924–1987
Essayist and novelist whose moral clarity on race, sexuality and belonging made him one of the essential voices of the American century.