Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) was a leading Nigerian novelist. He wrote primarily for an African audience, but the psychological insights in his novels have earned them universal acceptance. This 1989 Nobel literature laureate was also a poet, short-story writer, and essayist.
Born in the village of Ogidi in eastern Nigeria to an evangelical Protestant mission teacher, Chinua was named Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, after Queen Victoria’s consort. He grew up well adjusted to the two conflicting worlds of the traditional Igbo tribal life and the new European-Christian beliefs. He would chronicle this clash in his much-admired début novel Things Fall Apart (1958.) Achebe’s portrayal of life in an African village before and after the arrival of missionaries attained canonical status as not only the most widely read and the most influential work by an African writer but also as an important modern classic.
Achebe’s other notable works include the novels A Man of the People (1966,) Arrow of God (1964,) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987,) the collection of poems in Soul Brother (1971,) and the selection of essays and short stories in Girls at War (1972,) Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975,) and The Trouble with Nigeria (1983.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Chinua Achebe
Contradictions if well understood and managed can spark off the fires of invention. Orthodoxy whether of the right or of the left is the graveyard of creativity.
—Chinua Achebe
In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to ome forward and shoot your murderer in the chest—without asking to be paid.
—Chinua Achebe
Topics: Inspiration
A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.
—Chinua Achebe
Topics: Trouble
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