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
book thinking ask-me
If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to say. And I'd even go on and say, I don't even think so.
writing accepting
What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing.
writing primitive pens
I'm very primitive; I write with a pen.
character
There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
people praise critics
I don't praise my people. I am their greatest critic.
important be-kind neighbor
I know that an important message is not a novel. To say that we should all be kind to our neighbors is an important statement; it's not a novel.
thinking done world
I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world.
reading struggle writing
When I'm writing, I really want to satisfy myself. I've got a story that I am working on and struggling with, and I want to tell it the most effective way I can. That's really what I struggle with. And the thought of who may be reading it may be there somewhere in the back of my mind - I'll never say it's not there because I don't know - but it's not really what I'm thinking about.
strong energy word-of-mouth
We live in a society that is in transition from oral to written. There are oral stories that are still there, not exactly in their full magnificence, but still strong in their differentness from written stories. Each mode has its ways and methods and rules. They can reinforce each other; this is the advantage my generation has - we can bring to the written story something of that energy of the story told by word of mouth.
be-encouraged
A budding writer wants to be encouraged.
writing language novel
If someone said, I want to translate your novel into Igbo, I would say, Go ahead. But when I write in the Igbo language, I write my own dialect. I write some poetry in that dialect.
heart thinking racism
When I think of the standing, the importance and the erudition of all these people who see nothing about racism in Heart of Darkness, I'm convinced that we must really be living in different worlds.
trying
Whenever I try to do anything on a typewriter, it's like having this machine between me and the words; what comes out is not quite what would come out if I were scribbling.
giving advice not-good-enough
I grew up recognizing that there was nobody to give me any advice and that you do your best and if it's not good enough, someday you will come to terms with that.