Chinua Achebe falls apart
26 Jan 2014 10:13 PM GMT
If ever, there was a writer who caught the imagination and the creative capabilities of Africans; it was to Chinua Achebe. Doubtless. And now he is gone. And we are all poorer for that. He died on Friday morning (22 March 2013) in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dubbed as the father and the godfather of African literature, few people can disagree with that declaration. He is the most widely read African novelist and his four famous novels; Things Fall Apart, No longer at Ease, Arrow of God and A man of the People were instructive in their teaching, entertaining in their narration and above all examined Africa in the pre-colonial era as well as the disillusionment and the chaotic politics of post-colonial Africa.
Achebe was a celebrated novelist, short story writer, poet and an essayist with a perspicacious mind that was able to observe, register and transform even the most mundane of activities into hilarious wisecracks and he supplied more proverbs and idioms in the Africa literary sphere than any other writer, maybe bettered by Elechi Amadi’s one hit wonder Concubine. His Things Fall Apart protagonist Okwonkwo is a household name in Africa and the best embodiment of masculinity in pre-colonial Africa.
In East Africa as well as Africa and the entire world, his books have been used from time to time in secondary schools as well as in Universities Literature Departments.
His edifying book The Trouble with Nigeria is a recommendable read for every African and anyone tired with the politics of this continent. And what he wrote nearly three decades ago about the rot in Nigeria’s public institutions is applicable even in this era, when you would expect more from the leadership that is schooled and enlightened. His seminal essays, the Truth about Fiction and The Novelist as a Teacher, distinguished him greatly as one of the foremost literary voices and critics in Africa and in deed the world.
As the founding editor of Heinmann’s African Writers’ Series, he opened the door for many more writers including Ngugi wa Thiong’o whose Weep not Child was among the first titles to be featured in the series that is hitherto impossible to replicate. Ngugi, Amadi, Arma will all go to be one of the greatest African writers of the 20th century.
Over the last four decades, just like his contemporaries, he wrote less. He told Binyavanga Wainaina who has been Director of the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages at the Bard College in New York that the reason has to do with what he realised in 1975. Achebe claims that he woke up one day in 1975 and discovered most of his friends had disappeared. Either they had died or in exile. The he shifted more to essays as the room for creative expression had been stifled.
His consignment to the wheelchair over the last two decades after an accident served him no good and we have only heard less of him until his last memoir, There was a country.
A personal history of Biafra last year, which rekindled the sore memories of the Biafran war that claimed his best friend; the highly elliptical and elusive poet, Christopher Okigbo. The Biafran war has also been revisited by Chimamanda Adichie, whom Achebe endorsed as one of the young people who are endowed with the gift of ancient story tellers.
His contribution to African literature was immense and he will remain one of the greatest and the best ever writers to have ever come out of Africa. That he has not won a Nobel Prize escapes many, though his criticism of Joseph Conrad and run-ins with powers that be in the western world’s academic circles and his stand on racism might have played a hand in that. He lauded Wole Soyinka when he won in 1986 but insisted that it was a White man’s prize and asked Soyinka to go back to Nigeria and they fight their(African) own battles.
He was a great voice. A prophet. A teacher. A story teller. A custodian of the rich African heritage and Africans have learned so much from him and he will remain a gift, and though he has gone, his works will definitely outlive him.
Long live Papa.
Email: snyanchwani@gmail.com
Conceived by Kalyan Mukherjee, Consulting Editor, Africa Rising
Research & Advertising by Aman Ramrakha
Dubbed as the father and the godfather of African literature, few people can disagree with that declaration. He is the most widely read African novelist and his four famous novels; Things Fall Apart, No longer at Ease, Arrow of God and A man of the People were instructive in their teaching, entertaining in their narration and above all examined Africa in the pre-colonial era as well as the disillusionment and the chaotic politics of post-colonial Africa.
Achebe was a celebrated novelist, short story writer, poet and an essayist with a perspicacious mind that was able to observe, register and transform even the most mundane of activities into hilarious wisecracks and he supplied more proverbs and idioms in the Africa literary sphere than any other writer, maybe bettered by Elechi Amadi’s one hit wonder Concubine. His Things Fall Apart protagonist Okwonkwo is a household name in Africa and the best embodiment of masculinity in pre-colonial Africa.
In East Africa as well as Africa and the entire world, his books have been used from time to time in secondary schools as well as in Universities Literature Departments.
His edifying book The Trouble with Nigeria is a recommendable read for every African and anyone tired with the politics of this continent. And what he wrote nearly three decades ago about the rot in Nigeria’s public institutions is applicable even in this era, when you would expect more from the leadership that is schooled and enlightened. His seminal essays, the Truth about Fiction and The Novelist as a Teacher, distinguished him greatly as one of the foremost literary voices and critics in Africa and in deed the world.
As the founding editor of Heinmann’s African Writers’ Series, he opened the door for many more writers including Ngugi wa Thiong’o whose Weep not Child was among the first titles to be featured in the series that is hitherto impossible to replicate. Ngugi, Amadi, Arma will all go to be one of the greatest African writers of the 20th century.
Over the last four decades, just like his contemporaries, he wrote less. He told Binyavanga Wainaina who has been Director of the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages at the Bard College in New York that the reason has to do with what he realised in 1975. Achebe claims that he woke up one day in 1975 and discovered most of his friends had disappeared. Either they had died or in exile. The he shifted more to essays as the room for creative expression had been stifled.
His consignment to the wheelchair over the last two decades after an accident served him no good and we have only heard less of him until his last memoir, There was a country.
A personal history of Biafra last year, which rekindled the sore memories of the Biafran war that claimed his best friend; the highly elliptical and elusive poet, Christopher Okigbo. The Biafran war has also been revisited by Chimamanda Adichie, whom Achebe endorsed as one of the young people who are endowed with the gift of ancient story tellers.
His contribution to African literature was immense and he will remain one of the greatest and the best ever writers to have ever come out of Africa. That he has not won a Nobel Prize escapes many, though his criticism of Joseph Conrad and run-ins with powers that be in the western world’s academic circles and his stand on racism might have played a hand in that. He lauded Wole Soyinka when he won in 1986 but insisted that it was a White man’s prize and asked Soyinka to go back to Nigeria and they fight their(African) own battles.
He was a great voice. A prophet. A teacher. A story teller. A custodian of the rich African heritage and Africans have learned so much from him and he will remain a gift, and though he has gone, his works will definitely outlive him.
Long live Papa.
Email: snyanchwani@gmail.com
Conceived by Kalyan Mukherjee, Consulting Editor, Africa Rising
Research & Advertising by Aman Ramrakha
Next Story
