“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni MorrisonNominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadThings Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua … Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.
With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.
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I first learned about Things Fall Apart in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel, Americanah. Things Fall Apart was an important part of Adichie’s book — it seemed to be woven into the consciousness of all her African characters.
After reading Things Fall Apart, I can see why. In one concise, elegant story, Chinua Achebe evokes the carnage of colonialism from the African perspective.
What’s a good short read? At just around 200 pages, this is a short read but the story will stay with you long after you turn the last page. Okonkwo is the leader of his clan and a good man by his traditions. But he is born in a time of change when the old ways are quickly coming to an end. He tries to hold on to what he believes is true, just, and fair but the world around him is redefining the principles. Okonkwo cannot understand or keep up with the changes to his tribe, his family, and his world. Do not be put off by names you are not familiar with or the fact that this book is “about” Africa…it actually isn’t. Africa is just the setting for this commentary on change, tradition, power, and religion. Don’t read this book as a “foreign” story, read it as if you are Okonkwo or Nwoye….step into their story and see your world through their eyes.
I stumbled into Chinua Achebe through a text message.
Around Christmas, my father-in-law received a text from a friend of his at work. This friend had immigrated to the US from Africa, and as part of his well-wishing for Christmas, quoted a few lines from THINGS FALL APART.
My father-in-law read the text message out loud, and I asked where the quote was from. His friend had attributed Chinua Achebe. So I stalked him down, saw this book, and immediately requested it from my library.
Chinua Achebe is a one-of-a-kind author and I’m so in love with how different he feels from the historical fiction you see in our culture at large these days.
The prose could almost be described as halting, but also sometimes haunting. As he dives into tribal life in pre-Colonial Nigeria, in the late 1800’s, it sort of makes you realize that we’re starving for reality from that world.
His characters are imperfect, well-formed, and go through brutal changes. The stakes are set high, the culture is thick, deep, and beautiful, and I couldn’t stop reading.
The book itself is short, but powerful. It’s an eye-opener for anyone that hasn’t read real fiction from Africa (not second-hand accounts from people outside that reality).
Cannot wait to dive into the next ones.
I read this because it was on somebody’s 100 books to read list. What I found most interesting was how illuminating it was on my own perspective. Ithe book was written from the perspective of a native and I was reading from the POV of a colonizer. It wasn’t until I realized this, that I saw the author’s point.
“Things Fall Apart” is fascinating as it depicts what it felt like living in a clan in the SE part of Nigeria on the cusp of British colonization during the late 19th century. Written from the point of view of of someone living then and there, it personalizes that part of the world in a way I hadn’t before experienced in literature.
The plot follows the story of Okonkwo, a man who worked to rescue his family name from his father’s disgraceful failure, becomes successful in his Igbo Chinua Achebe details the clan’s parameters of rules, etiquette, beliefs and hierarchies and shows via internal monologues the difficulty of questioning the rules and going against the flow.
Okonkwo holds fast to his deeply held machismo ideal and derides any man who acts womanish, a trait he sees in his own son. He prides himself on his successes, and plans to become a great leader but he himself breaks a rule that changes the course of his life. Eventually the clan – who had never seen or dealt with white people – are confronted with the influx of Christian missionaries and British political envoys. The intercultural clash brought in by the colonists is psychologically and physically brutal.
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THINGS FALL APART is Chinua Achebe’s debut Novel about African Colonisation in Britain’s former Empire, Nigeria. The story touches on pre-colonial life in the Eastern part of Nigeria before the emergence of European powers. Things Fall Apart was set at the apogee of the “Scramble of African Colonies” by European Powers in the 19th Century. Things Fall Apart is Achebe’s finest fiction novel.
It’s truly an amazing book…
This book captures such a thick slice of the human condition. The storytelling is rich. The characters are dynamic and complex. The conflicts are conveyed with as much nuance and drama as they have in real life. Things Fall Apart evokes the feel of life as it was lived in a particular time and place, and yet it is timeless and universal. This book is one of the best ever written.
–It Just Happens-
I read this as in high school as it was part of an english assignment we had to do my sophomore year. So I am forever grateful that it was a part of the curriculum. I am not sure that I would have found it otherwise and that saddens me because it is one of my favorite books of all time. The book is about two stories that are connected. One part is of a man in a tribe in the center of Nigeria and another is where European missionaries come along to his tribe and deconstruct his world.
Throughout the book it talks about how society is and how man is and how tradition is and how different their cultures are. Things Fall Apart also talks about when some groups or cultures are stronger than others, they just take over and things get changed and life moves on. Or as others say “things fall apart” if you don’t quite want to go with how things are changing.
The book makes you think, makes you angry, it just makes you want to do things because it doesn’t end the way you want it to. This is a controversial book that is heartbreakingly tragic but is beautiful anyway because it just seems more realistic that way. I am surprised every time I read the book on how powerful the words feel. It almost feels like that world I am reading of is real and I am there, watching.
I read this during my sophomore Accelerated English 2 class, and it was my favorite book that we read that year. I really loved the story and the message that the novel conveyed. Achebe did an amazing job of portraying the characters in many different lights and making the book hard to put down. I would really recommend this book to everyone that is looking for a new book to pick up.
Excellent read and major insight of Africa and colonization.
Original story of a people and how a culture was transformed by foreigners.
The novel talks about the African village setting, its people, culture and ways of living before the coming of the British colonialists. The novel has a central character (Obi Okwonkwo) who drives the action-packed thriller to a tragic end.
Nice to see how other people in the world live. Tribal. Good stuff.
An engaging description of an African culture pre-contact with European cultures and at the beginning of contact. Interesting and informative book.
It helped me understand a culture completely different from my own, and how easily misunderstanding and miscommunication take place between such different groups. Although the white man may have had good intentions, they completely disrupted an existing way of life and wreaked havoc among a people who for the most part could not understand their ways.
African master piece
A classic of African literature in English. I’ve read it several times.
This is not so much a review of the book as it is a brief commentary of its personal and broader relevance. As a Nigerian-American, I can honestly say that Things Fall Apart is one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I read it in secondary school in Nigeria 30 years ago and most of it was lost on me because we were forced to read, memorize, and regurgitate its contents to pass exams. We did not have much have a chance to extract and discuss the WEALTH of knowledge that Chinua Achebe unfurls in this book.
Fast-forward to last week in the US when something kept telling me to order another copy (I’ve lived in a few countries, including Nigeria, and always feel compelled to buy this book anywhere I live but never find time to read it). So, I ordered yet another hard copy and then saw Amazon’s Kindle deal while the first copy was in transit in the post. It was a no-brainer — the Kindle version would solve my traveling woes! Moreover, I devoured it in 3 days! Then I discussed certain passages with my parents whose grandparents would have been Okonkwo’s peers and this precipitated priceless family discussions, taking my parents back to their respective childhoods.
Having been born in the US, I can count the number of times that we’ve tried to have similar discussions that ended up falling flat. I believe my re-reading of Achebe’s book, plus my mother’s grand decision to transplant me from the US and enroll me in a Nigerian secondary school decades ago, FINALLY helped us share and construct parts of our family’s historical story’s center that had never really had the chance to come together — not to talk of fall apart.
The novel also elicited compassion from me that gets buried (far) beneath the frustration at present-day Nigeria, which I’ve recently lived in and visit often. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe describes this functional society — sure, without the technological advances of iron horses and Western education — but functional enough to maintain law and order, as well as family and community (kinship) structures. My parents say that they remember some of those days and now I understand the heartbreak and ambivalence they must feel when they look at Nigeria today.
I also finished the book with more compassion towards pre-colonial worshippers of traditional or cultural gods. Achebe cleverly shows that it wasn’t much different from Christianity other than the multiplicity of mediator gods and the exclusion of certain groups and the sad, unfortunate mistreatment of twins. (My parents have a family friend who was an only child because his mother had given born to FOUR sets of twins — all of whom were you-know-what). As a Christian, I can easily rattle off the vast differences but sometimes it’s helpful to look at similarities, so you can understand where people are coming from and why they see things the way they do, and therefore do the things they do. The Igbos were just one ethnic groups in Nigeria that had to make decisions and adjustments to literally abandon who they were. Never mind how many other groups had to do the same across the entire country and continent!
Finally, I was struck by how certain elements of this 60 year-old novel foreshadows aspects of present-day Nigeria. In particular, the part about the colonial government messengers and 250 cowries had me howling out loud! Obviously, I don’t want to give it away, so please feel free to share your thoughts on this aspect after you’ve read the book!
While I understand Chimamanda Adichie’s warning not to heed to the narrative of a single story, Things Fall Apart is one story that I am proud to say represents an aspect of my heritage superbly. Achebe should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature because of the understanding Things Fall Apart presumably fostered between colonized peoples and their colonizers, between colonized people in general, and between people around the world in a much broader sense — and still does.
In short: I simply adore this book and hope you do, too!