Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

Heinemann, 1996 - Fiction - 148 pages

This expanded edition of Chinua Achebe's first novel portrays the collision of African and European cultures in an Igbo village. Okonkwo, a great man in Igbo traditional society, cannot adapt to the profound changes brought by the British conquest of Nigeria. Yet, as in classic tragedy, Okonkwo's character as well as external forces contribute to his downfall.

This expanded edition includes new illustrations, maps, additional essays on history, culture,and literature, and reference material to help readers see Achebe's classic novel in social and historical context, and to understand its place in world literature.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - BookConcierge - LibraryThing

Audio book performed by Peter Francis James 3.5*** (rounded up to 4****) In Achebe’s look at life in Nigeria before and after colonialism, Okonkwo is caught between the tribal traditions he has ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - dbsovereign - LibraryThing

A tragedy of colonialism and the reactions to it which doom its central characters. This is THE story of Africa and how it has suffered at the hands of arrogance and ethnocentrism. On a personal level, it is also the story of how an obsession with masculine strength can weaken us.

Contents

• Preface: v
• Igbo Culture and History by Don Ohadike: xix
• Principal Characters in the Novel: li

About the author

CHINUA ACHEBE was born in 1930 in the village of Ogidi in Eastern Nigeria. After studying medicine and literature at the University of Ibadan, he went to work for the Nigerian broadcasting company in Lagos. Things Fall Apart, his first novel was published in 1958. It sold over 2,000,000 copies, and has been translated into 30 languages. It was followed by No Longer at Ease, then Arrow of God (which won the first New Statesman Jock Campbell Prize), then A Man of the People (a novel dealing with post-independence Nigeria). Achebe has also written short stories and children's books, and Beware Soul Brother, a book of his poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972.Achebe has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and among the many honours he has received are the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Language Association of America, and doctorates from the Universities of Stirling, Southampton and Kent. He followed Heinrich Boll, th

Bibliographic information

• Title: Things Fall Apart; African writers series, ISSN 0065-4108; African writers series: Classics in context; Classics in context; Heinemann African Writers Series
• Author: Chinua Achebe
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Heinemann, 1996
• ISBN: 0435905252, 9780435905255
• Length: 148 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Literary