Things Fall Apart: A Novel - Softcover

Achebe, Chinua

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385474547 ISBN 13: 9780385474542

Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1958

Synopsis

"A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world." --Barack Obama

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read

Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.

With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

About this title

Review:

One of the most widely read novels from Nigeria's most famous novelist, Things Fall Apart is a gripping study of the problem of European colonialism in Africa. The story relates the cultural collision that occurs when Christian English missionaries arrive among the Ibos of Nigeria, bringing along their European ways of life and religion. In the novel, the Nigerian Okonkwo recognizes the cultural imperialism of the white men and tries to show his own people how their own society will fall apart if they exchange their own cultural core for that of the English.

Review:

Praise for Chinua Achebe

"A true classic of world literature...A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world." -- Barack Obama

"A magical writer--one of the greatest of the twentieth century." --Margaret Atwood

"African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe." --Toni Morrison

"Chinua Achebe has shown that a mind that observes clearly but feels deeply enough to afford laughter may be more wise than all the politicians and journalists." --Time

"Chinua Achebe is gloriously gifted with the magic of an ebullient, generous, great talent." --Nadine Gordimer

"Achebe's influence should go on and on . . . teaching and reminding that all humankind is one." --The Nation

"The father of African literature in the English language and undoubtedly one of the most important writers of the second half of the twentieth century." --Caryl Phillips, The Observer

"We are indebted to Achebe for reminding us that art has social and moral dimension--a truth often obscured." --Chicago Tribune

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

"For so many readers around the world, it is Chinua Achebe who opened up the magic casements of African fiction." --Kwame Anthony Appiah

"[Achebe] is one of world literature's great humane voices." --Times Literary Supplement

"Achebe is one of the most distinguished artists to emerge from the West African cultural renaissance of the post-war world." --The Sunday Times (London)

"[Achebe is] a powerful voice for cultural decolonization." --The Village Voice

"The power and 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

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1958
• ISBN 10: 0385474547
• ISBN 13: 9780385474542
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224