Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebewas a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apartwas considered his magnum opus, and is the most widely read book in modern African literature...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 November 1930
CityOgidi, Nigeria
CountryNigeria
stories complicated nigeria-independence
Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
europe moral gray
Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities
believe book people
The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the Book of Genesis, the very oldest.
war vines hints
After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig.
running fighting coward
A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
writing quality crafts
Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.
giving creative suffering
As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.
country writing community
If I write novels in a country in which most citizens are illiterate, who then is my community?
believe writing artist
It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important--and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important.
world lame pleasure
Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.
book people different
Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.
tree sun bigs
When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.
home weight able
I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings.
pain men grieving
They say a man is like a funeral ram which must take whatever beating comes to it without opening its mouth; only the silent tremor of pain down its body tells of its suffering.