Title: Things Fall Apart
Author: Chinua Achebe
Context: Things Fall Apart is a historical fiction novel by Chinua Achebe set in Nigeria in the 1800s. In the author’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy, this is the first of the three novels. Things Fall Apart is a masterpiece of Achebe which is compared very often to Greek tragedies. The novel is an ordinary tale about a young man whose life is influenced by anger and fear. Richly and uniquely African, it reveals the authors keen awareness of common qualities humans have to humans of all times and places. The novel has been penned down with subtle irony and extraordinary economy.
Synopsis: The story is a classic account about the devastating encounter Africa has with Europe during the process of establishing a colonial presence on the continent. The tale is presented through the fictional experiences of a fearless and rich Igbo warrior named Okonkwo of Umuofia during the late 1800s. The novel explores how the religious and political forces of Britain devalue the Igbo traditions. The warrior’s efforts in trying to retain the Igbo traditions prove to be useless and he only gets more and more desperate while Igbo community gradually surrenders to the new powerful new order.
The novel Things Fall Apart offers one of the most permanent and illuminating monuments to experiences in the African continent. While widening the understanding of the contemporary realities of the reader, the author not only talks about the devastation and loss of the continent but at the same time captures the lives of people in the pre-colonial villages in Africa.
Other works by the Author:
1994 – No Longer at Ease
1964 – Arrow of God
1966 – A Man of the People
1987 – Anthills of the Savannah
Short Stories
1952 – Marriage Is a Private Affair
1953 – Dead Men’s Path
1953 – The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories
1971 – Civil Peace
1973 – Girls at War and Other Stories
1985 – African Short Stories
1992 – The Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories
The Voter
Poetry
1971 – Beware, Soul-Brother and Other Poems, later published in the U.S. as Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems
1978 – Don’t Let Him Die: An Anthology of Memorial Poems for Christopher Okigbo
1988 – Another Africa
2004 – Collected Poems
Refugee Mother and Child
Vultures
Children’s Books
1966 – Chike and the River
1972 – How the Leopard Got His Claws
1975 – The Flute
1978 – The Drum
