When the region of Biafra broke away from Nigeria in 1967, Achebe became a devoted supporter of Biafran independence and served as ambassador for the people of the new nation. In 1975, his lecture An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' became the focus of controversy, for its criticism of Joseph Conrad as 'a bloody racist'. Achebe writes his novels in English and has defended the use of English, a 'language of colonizers', in African literature. He gained worldwide attention for Things Fall Apart in the late 1950s his later novels include No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987).

After graduation, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service and soon moved to the metropolis of Lagos.

He became fascinated with world religions and traditional African cultures, and began writing stories as a university student.

Raised by Christian parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria, Achebe excelled at school and won a scholarship for undergraduate studies. He is best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), which is the most widely read book in modern African literature. 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.Ĭhinua Achebe was a novelist, poet, professor at Brown University and critic. 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. 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. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read 'African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.' -Toni Morrison A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.' -Barack Obama

Achebe novels