Chinua Achebe

The Father of African Literature

Chinua Achebe (16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as the dominant figure of modern African literature.

Highlights on the life of Chinua Achebe

Birth and background (1930–1947)

Chinua Achebe was born on 16 November 1930 and baptised as Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe. His father, Isaiah Okafo Achebe, was a teacher and evangelist, and his mother, Janet Anaenechi Iloegbunam, was the daughter of a blacksmith from Awka, a leader among church women, and a vegetable farmer. His birthplace was Saint Simon's Church, Nneobi, which was near the Igbo village of Ogidi; the area was part of British Colonial Nigeria at the time...

University (1948–1953)

In 1948, Nigeria's first university opened in preparation for the country's independence. Known as University College (now the University of Ibadan), it was an associate college of the University of London. Achebe was admitted as the university's first intake and given a bursary to study medicine. During his studies, Achebe become critical of European literature about Africa, particularly Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. He decided to become a writer after reading Mister Johnson by Joyce Cary because of the book's portrayal of its Nigerian characters as either savages or buffoons...

Teaching and producing (1953–1956)

As a teacher he urged his students to read extensively and be original in their work. The students did not have access to the newspapers he had read as a student, so Achebe made his own available in the classroom. He taught in Oba for four months. He left the institution in 1954 and moved to Lagos to work for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS), a radio network started in 1933 by the colonial government. He was assigned to the Talks Department to prepare scripts for oral delivery. This helped him master the subtle nuances between written and spoken language, a skill that helped him later to write realistic dialogue...

Things Fall Apart (1957–1960)

Back in Nigeria, Achebe set to work revising and editing his novel; he titled it Things Fall Apart, after a line in the poem "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats). He cut away the second and third sections of the book, leaving only the story of a yam farmer named Okonkwo who lives during the colonization of Nigeria and struggles with his father's debtor legacy. He added sections, improved various chapters, and restructured the prose...

Things Fall Apart (1957–1960)

Nigeria-Biafra War (1967–1970)

In May 1967, the southeastern region of Nigeria broke away to form the Republic of Biafra; in July the Nigerian military attacked to suppress what it considered an unlawful rebellion. The Achebe family narrowly escaped disaster several times during the war, including a bombing of their house. During August 1967, Okigbo was killed fighting in the war. Achebe was shaken considerably by the loss; in 1971 he wrote "Dirge for Okigbo", originally in the Igbo language but later translated to English.

As the war intensified, the Achebe family was forced to leave Enugu for the Biafran capital of Aba. He continued to write throughout the war, but most of his creative work during this time took the form of poetry...

Postwar academia (1971–1975)

After the war, Achebe helped start two magazines in 1971: the literary journal Okike, a forum for African art, fiction, and poetry; and Nsukkascope, an internal publication of the University. Achebe and the Okike committee later established another cultural magazine, Uwa Ndi Igbo, to showcase the indigenous stories and oral traditions of the Igbo community. In February 1972 he released Girls at War, a collection of short stories ranging in time from his undergraduate days to the recent bloodshed. It was the 100th book in Heinemann's African Writers Series...

Further criticism (1975)

Achebe expanded this criticism when he presented a Chancellor's Lecture at Amherst on 18 February 1975, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness". Decrying Joseph Conrad as "a bloody racist", Achebe asserted that Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness dehumanises Africans, rendering Africa as "a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognisable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril."...

Retirement and politics (1976–1986)

After his service at UMass Amherst and a visiting professorship at the University of Connecticut, Achebe returned to the University of Nigeria in 1976, where he held a chair in English until his retirement in 1981. When he returned to the University of Nigeria, he hoped to accomplish three goals: finish the novel he had been writing, renew the native publication of Okike, and further his study of Igbo culture. In an August 1976 interview, he lashed out at the archetypal Nigerian intellectual, stating that the archetype was divorced from the intellect "but for two things: status and stomach. And if there's any danger that he might suffer official displeasure or lose his job, he would prefer to turn a blind eye to what is happening around him."In October 1979, Achebe was awarded the first-ever Nigerian National Merit Award...

Later years and death (2000–2013)

In 2000 Achebe published Home and Exile, a semi-biographical collection on both his thoughts on life away from Nigeria, as well as discussion of the emerging school of Native American literature. In October 2005, the London Financial Times reported that Achebe was planning to write a novella for the Canongate Myth Series, a series of short novels in which ancient myths from myriad cultures are reimagined and rewritten by contemporary authors...

"I think I am able to write because Chinua Achebe wrote. I think my generation of Nigerian writers are able to write because he wrote. In many ways, he paved the way..."
--Chimamanda Nngozi Adichie.

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