[size=20pt]The father of African literature[/size]
[size=20pt]The Number one most Influential African[/size]

1. Chinua Achebe, 80, Nigerian, Novelist
The father of African literature authored the 1958 classic, Things Fall Apart which has been translated into over 50 languages and has sold over 10 million copies internationally. In September, Achebe made headlines when he turned down a $1million offer from American Hip-Hop act, Curtis Jackson (A.K.A 50 Cent) for permission to use the Things Fall Apart title for an upcoming movie. The renowned novelist is also an essayist, political critic and currently serves as Professor of African studies at Brown University, Rhode Island.

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/ehed45mef/chinua-achebe/


http://www.superscholar.org/features/50-most-influential-books-last-50-years/
1. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), as the most widely read book in contemporary African literature, focuses on the clash of colonialism, Christianity, and native African culture.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe English 1958 11 million

TheBookWorm:
To be honest, I do not think he was simply an Igbo/Biafran icon. He is an AFRICAN ICON. There is a reason why people around the world consider him the "Father of African Literature." And to say anything less about this man is simply disrespectful.

I was not even born in Africa, but he opened my eyes to African literature. Keep in mind I was required to read Things Fall Apart back when I was in high school in the United States. It was part of the English curriculum and I do not think much has changed.

Calling him an Igbo/Biafran icon doesn't mean he wasn't an African icon. I was writing in the Nigerian context and how he chose to see himself before his untimely demise. At the end of the day, MLK was a universal hero because the civil rights movement paved the way for most of the equality and liberalism we're enjoying in the world today. However, he saw himself as an African-America/black hero hence why people see him as that.

You're also committing the same gaffe you accused me of by pigeonholing his writings into "African Literature." What's African literature?

I'm not from Nigeria as well but I did read some of his books. He was a great writer and I admire his simplified approach of writing

alomoh:

Exactly, Chinua Achebe became in his final days A hero of the Ibos, He could have earned for himself more honor as a Nigerian Hero, But he messed up the singular opportunity by his reminiscence of the long fratricidal warfare which has divided Nigerians. An history for which Ibos believed Yorubas are their enemies without proper counsel and historical facts. They roam around in Yoruba states doing business freely and Achebe dug out a lie in his “There was a Country” to confuse the Younger African and caused hatred before his demise
Achebe is really the Hero of the Tribal Ibos

In Pa Achebe's Voice...
"If u don't like someone's story,write your own”― Chinua Achebe.

So bad....things will N̶̲̥̅̊ø̲̣̣ longEr fall apart again...

afam4ever, you will see yourself, note this day.

cnn reporting it too

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/22/world/obit-chinua-achebe/index.html

I will remember how principled Achebe was, as his no was no and yes was yes.

He refused any award from Nigeria and always believed in himself and the truth.

His principles and truth, is wat, i will remember him for.

Who can fit the size of Achebe Shoes, so far? I don't see many or one. RIP!

RIP Prof Achebe.

The Biafran Chief propagandist is dead..who will wear his shoes? Chukwumerije?

So the Ibo mod is hiding yoruba posters comment?

I think this boy need to be put in his proper place in this community..

kingingkinging:

I wouldn't blame those who do not accord respect to Prof Achebe even at death. The simple reason is, Achebe too did same thing. He is only being paid back in the side of his coin. Releasing a book after 40 years of war to fan the ember of hatred in environment that is hostile already was a height of 'stupidity' ( pls forgive me for that). As an elder stateman. Every effort must be made to mend broken fences not to break more. He made that mistake and it is quite unfortunate.

If telling the truth as he saw it is making a mistake in world, some of us have contrary views.

ilugunboy: So the Ibo mod is hiding yoruba posters comment?

I think this boy need to be put in his proper place in this community..

Let me guess, it's you and your cohorts that will put him in his place? SMH...

Oh Nooooo I dont want to believe this.. I cant believe this great icon is gone... Oh No what a terrible loss *Sad*

ilugunboy: The Biafran Chief propagandist is dead..who will wear his shoes? Chukwumerije?

At least, a punk such as you noticed Achebe was Biafran Chief Propagandist. I guess you know what Dr. Ahmed Ali had for your folks in Nigeria.

Awwww! Baba Daadaa.... O ma shey O! R.I.P Prof

ilugunboy: So the Ibo mod is hiding yoruba posters comment?

I think this boy need to be put in his proper place in this community..

my brother pls try and grow up.you hate the man! We are ALL aware.pls move on.you r sounding irate.

manny4life:

Let me guess, it's you and your cohorts that will put him in his place? SMH...

Ibos are known to be egalitarian in nature maybe you should apply to take over his place. . .

bittyend:

Calling him an Igbo/Biafran icon doesn't mean he wasn't an African icon. I was writing in the Nigerian context and how he chose to see himself before his untimely demise. At the end of the day, MLK was a universal hero because the civil rights movement paved the way for most of the equality and liberalism we're enjoying in the world today. However, he saw himself as an African-America/black hero hence why people see him as that.

You're also committing the same gaffe you accused me of by pigeonholing his writings into "African Literature." What's African literature?

I'm not from Nigeria as well but I did read some of his books. He was a great writer and I admire his simplified approach of writing

I see the point you are trying to make with the Igbo icon. I do slightly disagree, but your argument still can be made.

Concerning the "pigeonholing" accusation, I disagree. In the literary world, authors from around the globe are associated with their geography. We have European literature, American literature, Asian literature, Latin American literature and African literature. Professor Achebe's novels falls into the category African literature and I see nothing wrong with that. His novels illustrate Africa's unique cultures. You may call it "pigeonholing" but I see it as bringing diversity to the world of literature.

juman:

Yeah, a generation is passing on. Just few of them are good while most people of that generation are very useless people.

So true and funny.

~Bluetooth:


Ibos are known to be egalitarian in nature maybe you should apply to take over his place. . .

Smh @ you

An iroko has fallen. The cannon has gone off and the thunder roared in the sky.
Lightening flashes and disappeared. Our eyes are drenched with tears. Prof Achebe has gone!
A man that fought fiercely for equity and justice even at the expense of his life.
A literary warrior, a fighter, a mouthpiece of the downtrodden, a hero, a light of reasoning, a man of intergrity.
Difficult to describe you in whole, and as you said 'nobody can teach me who I am' you know better who you are, but the little we know about you, is forever green in our heart.
Rest in Peace. Your legacy can never be erased.

Chinua Achebe, Author of Things Fall Apart, Dead at 82
Max Read
Gawker.com (USA)

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author and critic best known for his first novel Things Fall Apart, has died in Boston following an illness. He was 82.

Achebe was born in southern Nigeria in 1930, the fifth child of Protestant Igbo parents, and baptized Albert Chinualumogu Achebe. He was from an early age a remarkable student—his classmates nicknamed him "Dictionary"—and he read voraciously: Shakespeare, Dickens, Booker T. Washington. After a short post-graduation stint teaching English, Achebe was hired by the Nigerian Broadcasting Service in Lagos, where he edited radio scripts and began work on a novel.

That novel would become likely the widest read African novel in history, but it was initially rejected by several publishers. The story of the life of a 19th-century Igbo leader confronting the humiliations of colonialism and missionary Christianity, Things Fall Apart is now a classic, assigned in schools worldwide. At the time it was difficult to sell: an English-language book by an African author. But in 1958, encouraged by an employee who had recently traveled to Africa, Heinemann bought and published the book. Though not a sensation, it was well received, and Achebe's career as a novelist had begun.

Achebe continued to work at NBS even as his stature grew. In 1961 he married a coworker, Christie Okoli; the year before he had dedicated his second novel, No Longer at Ease, a kind of sequel to Things Fall Apart, to her. In 1964 he published his third novel, Arrow of God. He traveled around Africa and was promoted at the NBS; Heinemann chose asked him to edit its African Writers Series, where he published Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's first book. In 1966, at that point a father twice over, he published his first children's book, and a fourth novel, A Man of the People.

In 1967, civil war broke out in Nigeria, and Achebe—whose most recent book had closely mirrored the recent political events of his home country—became a partisan of, and eventually ambassador for, the breakaway, largely Igbo nation of Biafra. Despite his efforts to raise awareness of the civil war in the U.S. and Europe, the Biafran military eventuall surrendered, and in 1970 the former boundaries of Nigeria were restored. (There was a Country: A personal history of Biafra, Achebe's memoir of the Biafran War, garnered some acclaim and a lot of controversy when it was published last year).

Two years later, Achebe moved to Massachusetts, accepting a professorship at UMass Amherst. There, he wrote and presented one of the best known academic lectures of the 20th century, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," a brutal summation of Conrad's famous novel that shocked and angered many of his peers. (I can say with some authority that it was still shocking and angering students as recently as 2007.) "An Image of Africa" represented a major break with previous readings of Conrad, and began a new chapter in readers' understandings of Heart of Darkness—one of few books as frequently assigned in English classes as Things Fall Apart.

Achebe returned to Africa in the 1980s, teaching at the University of Kenya and the University of Nigeria and becoming active in Nigerian politics again. His fifth novel, Anthills of the Savannah, was released in 1987. Three years later, Achebe was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. He moved back to America, where he taught at Bard and then at Brown; in 2007 he was awarded the Man Booker prize. Though Anthills was his last novel, he continued to write poetry and criticism. In 1998, he gave an series of lectures later published in Home and Exile, quoted at length at the Awl, in which he connected his life to his hopes for the new century:

My hope for the twenty-first is that it will see the first fruits of the balance of stories among the world's peoples. The twentieth century for all its many faults did witness a significant beginning, in Africa and elsewhere in the so-called Third World, of the process of 're-storying' peoples who had been knocked silent by the trauma of all kinds of dispossession. I was lucky to be present at one theater of that reclamation. And I know that such a tremendously potent and complex human reinvention of self-calling, as it must do, on every faculty of mind and soul and spirt; drawing as it must, from every resource of memory and imagination and from a familiarity with our history, our arts and culture; but also from an unflinching consciousness of the flaw that blemished our inheritance-such an enterprise could not be expected to be easy. And it has not been.

http://gawker.com/5991871/chinua-achebe-author-of-things-fall-apart-dead-at-82

ilugunboy: So the Ibo mod is hiding yoruba posters comment?

I think this boy need to be put in his proper place in this community..

Childish talk. so unnecessary.