“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 Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things 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.
Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger is a collection that tells the stories of African womanhood and what it is imagined to be. Among the stories are "The Gaps in My Memory," "A Childless Wife," "The Silence of the Gods," "The House Girl," and the title story, "Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger." With each story, the reader continues to be drawn into the experiences, both feelings and thoughts, of women and girls... Situating the stories within rich context of culture and place enriches the reader's appreciation for the struggles, resilience, and oppression that is experienced on a daily basis by females around the world... In each story, we might wonder about what each character could have done to make a difference. Lemuel Warren Watson Provost professor Senior scientist, the Kinsey Institute "You see, women are not born. They are made. That's how they are made.... You ought to do it," she added as a last latch in her persuasion. --"The Gaps in My Memory" "There is nothing wrong with you," the doctor told me with utter certainty and pushed toward me, across his table, the report of my test.... "I am sure you will be pregnant," he added. I was no longer listening to him. I was right then wondering why I could not get pregnant if there was nothing wrong with me. --"A Childless Wife" "Satan is a liar," the pastor uttered and raised his Bible.... --"The Silence of the Gods" "You have made my day," she said and let me out of her embrace. I knew I felt the same thing I had felt with Anuli. I avoided her eyes so she would not see the joy that radiated on my face. It came as a surprise. --"The House Girl" Fide opened one of the drawers in his library and pulled out a brown folder. It was dusty and wrinkled on the edges and was secured tightly with a rope. He blew on it slowly to ward off the creams of dust. He then looked at what he had written over thirty years ago on the folder: "the Pacification of the Primitive." There was no impression on his face, which was then plain like his bald head. What was rather remarkable was his overall weakness; his hands trembled as he was untying the folder. When he pulled out a ream in it, his hands were also trembling, even as he sifted through the pages. He flipped through the first few pages; there was evidence of hesitations shown through cancellations and ripped pages, then he came to the section the author had entitled "The Evil Forest." On the margin, the author had other narratives that clarified what he was saying about the forest. There was a marginal narrative about egwugwu. Literally, he had unmasked egwugwu, calling it a "heathenish recreation at best" yet "a masculine secret society aimed at hoodwinking the people." --"Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger "
"The authors examine Saro-Wiwa's literary output both in terms of literary criticism and within a political framework. They give equal attention to his more public roles, including public reaction within Nigeria to his work."--BOOK JACKET.
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.
The eleven short stories in this prize-winning collection pivot on life's ambiguities and the central question they pose in Tabucchi's fiction: is it choice, fate, accident, or even, occasionally, a kind of magic that plays the decisive role in the protagonists' lives? The eleven short stories in this prize-winning collection pivot on life's ambiguities and the central question they pose in Tabucchi's fiction: is it choice, fate, accident, or even, occasionally, a kind of magic that plays the decisive role in the protagonists' lives? Blended with the author's wonderfully intelligent imagination is his compassionate perception of elemental aspects of the human experience, be it grief as in "Waiting for Winter," about the widow of a nation's literary lion, or madcap adventure as in "The Riddle," about a mysterious lady and a trip in Proust's Bugatti Royale.
Chinua Achebe has long been regarded as Africa’s foremost writer. In this major new study, Jago Morrison offers a comprehensive reassessment of his work as an author, broadcaster, editor and political thinker. With new, historically contextualised readings of all of his major works, this is the first study to view Achebe’s oeuvre in its entirety, from Things Fall Apart and the early novels, through the revolutionary Ahiara Declaration – previously attributed to Emeka Ojukwu – to the revealing final works The Education of a British Educated Child and There Was a Country. Contesting previous interpretations which align Achebe too easily with this or that nationalist programme, the book reveals Achebe as a much more troubled figure than critics have habitually assumed. Authoritative and wide-ranging, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of Achebe’s work in the twenty-first century.
Chinua Achebe's influence on contemporary African literature is as much in evidence in his art of the novel as his theory of African literature and literary criticism. ISINKA (Igbo term for artistic purpose') establishes Achebe's legacy as a literary theorist and critic. In these essays scholars from around the globe assess and establish how much Achebe's extra-fictional ideas about African literature and literature in general are justified in his own creative works.'
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