Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Casebook

by Isidore Okpewho

Chinua Achebe is Africa's most prominent writer, and Things Fall Apart (1958) is the most renowned and widely-read African novel in the global literary canon. Translated into close to sixty languages, Things Fall Apart is the novel that inaugurated the long and continuing tradition of postcolonial inquiry into the problematic relations between the West and the countries of the Third World that were once European colonies.

This collection explores the artistic, multicultural, and global significance of Things Fall Apart from a variety of critical perspectives. The essays selected for this casebook represent the most important and well-established critical work written on the novel to date. This volume also contains an editor's introduction, an interview with Chinua Achebe, and suggestions for further reading.

Genres: Fiction, Africa, Historical, Cultural

288 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2003

About the author

Nigerian novelist and critic, born in Abraka in midwestern Nigeria, educated at the University of Ibadan and the University of Denver, Colorado.

He has taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo (1974-76), University of Ibadan (1976-90), Harvard University (1990-91), and Binghamton University (since 1991). In 1992 he was appointed Professor of Afro-American and African Studies at Binghampton University, New York.

Reviews

[Bugrahan]

The articles written by Jeyifo, MacKenzie and Joyafor are quite well-written and insightful, offering a much deserved originality in the general scheme of postcolonial discourse. The others read so commonplace I'm afraid.

[Amy Dent]

I really enjoyed the book "Things Fall Apart." I'm not much of a reader but this book has really caught my attention. I enjoyed the book because it always had a little twist at the end. I would reccomend this book to anyone to read. It has taught me the importance of strength and loyalty.

[Kahlea]

I had to reed it for school so my opinion should not really count of it.

[Rhod]

Read by accident - now on to the real book.