Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart @ 50

THINGS FALL APART AT 50: CHINUA ACHEBE RULES THE WORLD


By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu



At barely 28 years of age Chinua Achebe published the novel Things Fall Apart in 1958, and it has in its fifty years of existence proven to be the single most important piece of literature out of Africa. The 50th anniversary of the 200-odd page novel is being celebrated all over the world with festivals, readings, symposia, concerts etc. The novel which has been likened to epic Greek tragedies has been translated to 50 languages and has sold over ten million copies. It is taught not just in literature classes but in history and anthropology departments in colleges and universities across the globe. The archetypal theme of the meeting of the white world and the black race makes Things Fall Apart an epochal event in the annals of world literature.

Things Fall Apart tells the deceptively simple story of Okonkwo, a strong man whose life is dominated by the fear of failure. As a teenager he brought honour to his village by throwing the hitherto unbeatable Amalinze the Cat in a wrestling match. His fame spread through the nine villages of Umuofia and even beyond like harmattan bushfire, but he remained troubled that his father Unoka was a debtor and a failure. As if to compound matters, Okonkwo notices weakness in his own son Nwoye, and he comes to the sad conclusion that raging fire only ends up as impotent ash. Against the warning of an elder, he kills the ill-fated child Ikemefuna who had been given over to the people of Umuofia as ransom, a child who called him “father”. An accidental gunshot that kills a fellow villager at a wake leads to Okonkwo being exiled from Umuofia for seven years. When he comes back from exile he discovers that the Christian missionaries have literally overrun the land and even his son Nwoye had joined them. In anger Okonkwo cuts off the head of the white man’s messenger but the people of Umuofia would not follow him to war. He hangs himself on a tree and ends up being buried by the strangers he had spent his life fighting.

The book works at several levels, and can be read at any age from 10 to 100. As a child one can enjoy the incidents such as the match with Amalinze the Cat, Unoka’s dismissal of his creditor, Okonkwo’s attempted shooting of one of his wives, the visitation of the masked spirits etc. Later in life the many ironies in the book come into play such as the joke on the District Commissioner thinking that Okonkwo’s story can only end up as a paragraph in his planned book, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger, without knowing that one Chinua Achebe had taken the thunder from him by giving Okonkwo an entire book in which the story is narrated from inside!

It is not for nothing that Achebe is celebrated as the father of African literature. He has changed the perspective of world literature from the gaudy picture of Africa as painted by Europeans such as Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Sir Rider Haggard to the authentic telling of the tale by the Africans. Unlike earlier African writers like Guinea’s Camara Laye, author of The African Child, who painted a romantic picture of the continent, Achebe is relentlessly objective in his narration, telling it as it is, warts and all.

It is because of the remarkable success of Things Fall Apart that the publishers Heinemann UK launched the African Writers Series (AWS) in 1962 with Achebe’s first novel as the first title. For many years Achebe served as a non-remunerated Editorial Adviser of the series in which the majority of African writers got their breakthrough in publishing. Things Fall Apart reputedly accounted for 80 percent of the entire revenue of the AWS.

Nelson Mandela calls Achebe “the writer in whose hands the prison walls came crashing down.” Former American President Jimmy Carter numbers Achebe as one of his favourite writers. The rave reviews for Achebe’s most famous novel have somewhat dwarfed his other novels such as No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). Achebe recently won the Man Booker Prize for his lifetime achievement in fiction writing, beating a formidable shortlist that included Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Ian McEwan etc. He equally won, as the first African, the American National Arts Club Medal of Honour for Literature in November 2007.

The celebration of Things Fall Apart as a global event has seized hold of all the continents. The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) which Achebe founded and served as first President is hosting an international colloquium on “50 Years of Things Fall Apart: Telling the African Story in a Global World”. The ANA event will feature a plenary on the theme, book exhibitions, visits to historical places like where Achebe stayed while writing the book, special auction of early copies of the book, the screening of the NTA adaptation of the novel, a competition on the adaptation of Achebe’s work etc.

Universities across the globe, notably, Princeton University USA, University of London England, Central State University, Wilberforce Ohio etc are organizing landmark events based on the novel. On April 1 State University of New York, Buffalo State undertook the screening of “Chinua Achebe with Bill Moyers” for 30 minutes as well as the 60-minute documentary “Chinua Achebe: the importance of Stories.” The PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Anchor Books USA and the Washington Post Book World presented “An Evening with Chinua Achebe” on March 24 at the Washington Post Building, Washington DC.

Labyrinth Books under the leadership of Dorothea Von Moltke celebrated the 50th anniversary of Things Fall Apart on Wednesday March 26 by getting Chinua Achebe in person to read from the book and discuss it with acclaimed philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah, to a packed audience in the Nassau Presbyterian Church.

Things Fall Apart has earned its uncommon distinction as a modern classic and was in 1992 adopted into the esteemed Everyman’s Library of world classics. The Igbo world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which Achebe limned in Things Fall Apart has become the global picture of Africa writ large. At the turn of the 20th century the book was voted as Africa’s “novel of the century”. Achebe has in the book given the world a new English language which paradoxically portrays African life without facetiousness or affectation. He lays bare the brute masculinity of the age without bending the knee to latter-day political correctness or gender balance. The truth happens to be Achebe’s sublime weapon in telling the immortal African story.