New lino print! This time it’s author and educator Chinua Achebe, one of the literary greats from the African continent. I read his book “Things Fall Apart” in high school and it always stayed with me. It was so refreshing to read a narrative told from a different perspective. Achebe believed in a “balance of stories”, something his fellow Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also discusses in her TED talk “the danger of a single story”.
Chinua Achebe’s book “Things Fall Apart”, named after a line in the poem “The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats, is considered the most widely read book in modern African literature. In 2007 Achebe won the Man Booker International Prize and worked as a Professor at different prestigious universities.
Raised in the Igbo town of Ogidi, in Southeastern Nigeria, Achebe grew up during colonial rule and experienced several wars. During his studies, he switched from medicine to literature, history and theology. His readings of representations of Nigerians left him appalled, as they were characterised as buffoons or savages. This was partially his driver to write his own characters. Many of his stories are themed around religion, traditional African cultures, the clash between modernity and tradition and use oral histories.
An interesting anecdote, which reminds us how fragile history can be, comes from the time just before Things Fall Apart. He’d come to a version of the book he wanted to share with publishers and sent his only handwritten copy (plus a fee) to London, where an ad offered a typing service. After several months without any word, the worry began to set in. His boss at the time, Angela Beattie, was travelling to London and visited the typing service’s office, where the manuscript lay ignored. She reprimanded them, after which a typed copy was quickly sent to Achebe. Beattie’s intervention was crucial for his ability to continue as a writer. Had the novel been lost, he later said, “I would have been so discouraged that I would probably have given up altogether.”
His views on the world continue to be relevant and feel wise and considered. I’d argue it is still absolutely worth reading “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness“, Achebe’s Chancellor’s Lecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst given in February 1975. Basically, add him to your reading list!
Brain & Guts 