Reading Chinua Achebe

by Simon Gikandi

Simon Gikandi has set out to reveal the very nature of Achebe's creativity, its prodigious complexity and richness, its paradoxes and ambiguities.

Genres: Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Simon E. Gikandi is a Kenyan Literature Professor and Postcolonial scholar. He is the Robert Schirmer Professor of English at Princeton University. He is perhaps best known for his co-editorship (with Abiola Irele) of The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature. He has also done important work on the modern African novel, and two distinguished African novelists: Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. In 2019 he became the president of the Modern Language Association.

Gikandi was born to a Presbyterian family. He graduated with a B.A [First Class Honors] in Literature from the University of Nairobi. He was a British Council Scholar at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland from which he graduated with a M.Litt. in English Studies. He has a Ph.D in English from Northwestern University. His major Fields of Research and Teaching are the Anglophone Literatures and Cultures of Africa, India, the Caribbean, and Postcolonial Britain, the "Black" Atlantic and the African Diaspora. He is also interested in the encounter between European and African languages in the modern period, literature and human rights, and writing and cultural politics.

Reviews

[Samir Rawas Sarayji · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent analysis of 5 of Achebe's novels: Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, and Anthills of the Savannah. Indispensible for students writing a paper on Achebe or one of those novels.