Hero Who Reclaimed Africa's Literary Desert

When Chinua  Achebe published his first novel,it suddenly occurred to the world that Africa could express herself through literature ,and in her own voice and terms.

An enduring masterpiece,Things Fall Apart ,published in 1958,received and continues to receive global acclaim


Chinua Achebe has confessed that his greatest motivation to become a writer was  the indignation he felt at  the skewed depictions of Africa by some English writers such as Joseph Conrad and Karen Blixen.


"The story of my people was not going to be like one of those written  by adventurous Europeans in which the white man was always the winner" Achebe said of  Things Fall Apart.

Before 1958 ,among others ,Joseph Conrad and Karebn Blixen  had painted Africa as  utterly exotic in what has come to be seen as  a deliberate attempt to attract European tourists and settlers to the continent,and raise financial prospects in return.

But Things Fall Apart ,which has since sold over  nine million copies worldwide  adequately told off Conrad's The Heart Of Darkness, and Blixen's Out Of Africa.

In their books both Conrad and Blixen  draw Africa as a continent without order with Blixen at one point likening her cook to her dog.

Educated in Nigeria and Britain,,Achebe read Conrad's The Heart Of Darkness for his degree,and was henceforth determined to counter the falsehoods .He would later--in an article --accuse Joseph Conrad of racism.
"The novelist  is a teacher  who needs to re-educate   people"Achebe said  in an article.

Born in 1930 among the Ibo People ,Achebe ,who also writes poetry,is probably Africa's most read and discussed writer.

During the Biafran War  that broke  out in 1966 with the abortive attempt to establish  an independent Republic of Biafra by Eastern  Ibos,Achebe put paid to  to the writing of his  sixth book,The Anthills Of  the Savanna to  publicize  his people's tribulations through poetry.His efforts culminated in  Beware Soul Brother ,a collection of poems  on the Ibo experience  in the three-year war.


The book apeared in the United States  of America as Chrismas in Biafra and Other Poems..When he published   A Man Of the People in 1966,he  was forced to flee to exile  as the novel  implicated him in a coup it preceded due to its prophetic ending.

Achebe escaped arrest narrowly and fled to The United States Of America

While in America ,he became editor of Okike,an influential  African literary magazine .He also became professor of English at Massachusetts at Amherst .

Achebe's other books include:Arrow Of God (Which he says is the novel he is most likely to be caught sitting to read again),and Chike  and The River ,which Achebe describes as 'a novel for boys'.

In 2001,Achebe published Home and Exile ,and most recently in 2010 ,The Education of a British-protected Child,in which he tells his own story growing under colonialism .

On his return to Nigeria in from exile in 1976,Achebe became professor of English at the university of Nigeria .And in 1990,he was involved in a fatal road accident  that would see him on a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

But although the tragic  accident  rendered his legs useless,Achebe continues to shake the literary world ,churning out ideas on social life politics and language.He has received dozens of accolades in international circles.

For this man ,it can be said,the center continues to hold.