No Longer at Ease (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Achebe, Chinua

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141191554 ISBN 13: 9780141191553

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2010

Synopsis

Obi Okonkwo is an idealistic young man who, thanks to the privileges of an education in Britain, has now returned to Nigeria for a job in the civil service. However in his new role he finds that the way of government seems to be backhanders and corruption. Obi manages to resist the bribes that are offered to him, but when he falls in love with an unsuitable girl - to the disapproval of his parents - he sinks further into emotional and financial turmoil. The lure of easy money becomes harder to refuse, and Obi becomes caught in a trap he cannot escape.

Showing a man lost in cultural limbo, and a Nigeria entering a new age of disillusionment, No Longer at Ease concludes Achebe's remarkable trilogy charting three generations of an African community under the impact of colonialism, the first two volumes of which are Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God.

About this title

Review:

"Chinua Achebe is a magical writer -- one of the greatest of the twentieth century."
-- Margaret Atwood

"It is a measure of Achebe's creative gift that he has no need whatsoever for prose fireworks to light the flame of his intense drama. Wothry of particular attention are the characters. Achebe doesn't create his people with fastidiously detailed line drawings: instead, he relies on a few short strokes that highlight whatever prominent features will bring the total personlaity into three-dimensional life."
-- "Time
"
"The power of majesty of Chinua Achebe's work has, literally, opened the world to generations of readers. He is an ambassador of art, and a profound recorder of the human condition."
-- Michael Dorris

"He is one of the few writers of our time who has touched us with a code of values that will never be ironic. This great voice."
-- Michael Ondaatje

About the Author:

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and was a graduate of University College, Ibadan. His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. Achebe joined the Biafran Ministry of Information and represented Biafra on various diplomatic and fund-raising missions. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad. For over fifteen years, he was the Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He was the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies at Brown University. Chinua Achebe wrote over twenty books - novels, short stories, essays and collections of poetry - and received numerous honours from around the world, including the Honourary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as honourary doctorates from more than thirty colleges and universities. He was also the recipient of Nigeria's highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction. He died in 2013.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0141191554
• ISBN 13: 9780141191553
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144