THINGS FALL APART

One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental renderin g of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declare d 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 co...[Read more]