Book Bearings
Things Fall Apart
- 192 pages · about 3 hours
- First published 1958
- 94 editions
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1 About this book
Things Fall Apart, the first novel by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, was published in 1958. Okonkwo is a famous man in the Igbo clan of Umuofia: a champion wrestler, a warrior and a prosperous farmer, driven by the fear of resembling his idle, indebted father. The first part of the novel shows the life of his village in detail, its farming, festivals, courts, gods and family customs, and Okonkwo's harsh rule over his own household. Then Christian missionaries and British colonial officers arrive in the region, and the clan has to decide how to answer them. The title comes from a poem by W. B. Yeats.
- Race relations
- Historical fiction
- Igbo (African people)
- Classics
- Nigeria
- Political
- Masculinity
- British colonialism
2 What to expect
A short novel about Okonkwo, a proud and feared leader in an Igbo village, in the years when missionaries and British rule reach southeastern Nigeria. Much of it is a close picture of village life before colonization, told in plain English prose shaped by Igbo proverbs and stories. Masculinity, tradition, fear of weakness and the meeting of two cultures are the themes, and it is a tragedy, with violence in the home along the way.
Good for readers who want: African literature, a short modern classic, and colonialism seen from the inside.
3 About Chinua Achebe
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Chinua Achebe
5 Similar books
- Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
- A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
- Burmese Days by George Orwell
- Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart by Harold Bloom