I read this novel in an almost constant state of rage. First of all, I disliked the main character for his behavior. In our modern society his husband and parenting skills would be considered appalling. I know, I know, the guy was a member of a Nigerian tribe some time ago but the abuse of women and the psychological scarring of children do not sit well with me. Later, the Christian missionaries appeared and the rage scale went through the roof. The novel is the story of Okonkwo and his tribe be...

How to attempt a balanced review of Things Fall Apart: 1. The book is serious. Themes and issues dealt in the book are far more serious than many other books written by the contemporary authors of Achebe. 2. The colonial abstract takes an altogether different turn as Achebe explores that colonisers not only colonised the land and properties but also the minds and hearts of the native people. 3. Racism has been dealt very aptly and also religious hypocrisy - different churches for the people who ...

[Edited 4/1/22]Wiki calls the book the most widely read book in modern African literature. Written in 1958, this is the classic African novel about how colonialism impacted and undermined traditional African culture. It’s set among the Igbo people of Nigeria (aka Ibos). A key phrase is found late in the book: “He [the white man] has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.” The main character is a strong man, the village wrestling champion. He has three wives and...

LE COSE CAMBIANO, CROLLANOÈ impossibile circoscrivere il ruolo di Achebe nella letteratura africana. È come cercare di definire in che modo Shakespeare ha influenzato gli scrittori inglesi o Puškin quelli russi.Il crollo, o anche Le cose crollano, (1958) è il primo romanzo di una trilogia che include Non più tranquilli del 1960 e il celebre La freccia di dio apparso quattro anni dopo (1964). Questo primo ha venduto oltre dieci milioni di copie, è stato tradotto in 50 lingue, ed è libro di testo ...

Achebe’s protagonist isn’t a very nice man. In reality he is an asshole. I don’t like him. I don’t think anyone really does. He is ruthless and unsympathetic to his fellow man. He grew up in a warrior’s culture; the only way to be successful was to be completely uncompromising and remorseless. His father was weak and worthless, according to him, so he approached life with an unshakable will to conquer it with his overbearing masculinity. ”When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was h...

My son and I had a long talk about this novel the other day, after he finished reading it for an English class. Over the course of the study unit, we had been talking about Chinua Achebe's fabulous juxtaposition of different layers of society, both within Okonkwo's tribe, and within the colonialist community. We had been reflecting on aspects of the tribe that we found hard to understand, being foreign and against certain human rights we take for granted, most notably parts of the strict hierarc...

“The drums were still beating, persistent and unchanging. Their sound was no longer a separate thing from the living village. It was like the pulsation of its heart. It throbbed in the air, in the sunshine, and even in the trees, and filled the village with excitement.” - Chinua Achebe, Things Fall ApartThis is a book of many contrasts; colonialism and traditional culture, animism and Christianity, the masculine and the feminine, and the ignorant and the aware (although who is who depends on who...

In this classic tale Okonkwo is a strong man in his village, and in his region of nine villages. At age 18 he beat the reigning wrestling champion and has been an industrious worker all his life, a reaction to his lazy, drunkard father. He lives his life within the cultural confines of his limited world, following the laws that govern his society, accepting the religious faith of his surroundings, acting on both, even when those actions would seem, to us in the modern west, an abomination. While...

This review is now on my blog: https://www.skylarb.com/single-post/2...

The act of writing is strangely powerful, almost magical: to take ideas and put them into a lasting, physical form that can persist outside of the mind. For a culture without a written tradition, a libraries are not great structures of stone full of objects--instead, stories are curated within flesh, locked up in a cage of bone. To know the story, you must go to the storyteller. In order for that story to persist through time, it must be retold and rememorized by successive generations.A book, s...