@Namfav, If Chinua is held to one standard that should not even be applied to him, then the standard must be followed through for everyone else, including Sanusi.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

namfav:
okay, i won't call your HERO a nonsense man because it makes you cry like a baby

If you also called Sanusi a nonsense man in light of some of the things he has said about Yorubas I would not even address your drug induced rants.

Ok...I have heard. My last post here.

One_Naira: this OAM47 guy is really as tribalistic as it comes. you hid every comment by the igbos on this forum as retailation to some yorubas on this thread but left the glaring tribalistic comment of those yorubas that resulted the tribalistic comment of the Igbo you hid alone. WOW. this is the fifth thread so far you've done this. We see through dude. SMH even hid the post where some igbos including my own were telling the igbos to respect this man death and mourn him. don't fight. even hid post on those defending afam but allowed the post of those accusing him left alone. wow dude, you never cease to amaze us with your double standard and tribalistic act.

anyway globe, nnenna, etc. Enough!!! what una are doing is against Igbo culture. You don't fight immediately after a mans death and you definately don't fight during his mourning period. Stop already. wait till his mournin period is over. you are defending him but una are equally disrespecting him by fighting right now. lastly if they start banning, it's una that OAM47 is going to ban and leave those that provoked and started the whole sh1t alone like he usually does.

you can equally hide this comment if you like. as long as nnenna read it before you do so then I'm satisified

his books don't feed us, he was not a practical man he just lived through his imagination

nnenna.1:
@Namfav, If Chinua is held to one standard that should not even be applied to him, then the standard must be followed through for everyone else, including Sanusi.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Chinua Achebe death: 'a mind able to penetrate the mystery of being human

Nadine Gordimer on the fifty year career of the Nigerian author of Things Fall Apart, who has died in Boston aged 82



Taking the Irish poet WB Yeats's despairing statement of destruction – things fall apart – for its title, Chinua Achebe's first novel was a presentiment of what was to come in Nigeria during the end of the colonial occupations and their aftermath. It is the founding creation of modern African imaginative literature, the opening act of exploration into African consciousness using traditional modes of expression along with those appropriated from colonial culture, particularly the English language.

That first work was also prescient – not only of Achebe's creative powers to develop as a writer in subsequent works, but of the political upheavals, the embattled end of colonialism, the fight for freedom by which the lives of the people of Africa have been shaped.

Achebe lived through these times – a tragic civil war in his country – as an activist in extreme personal danger, finally exile, fulfilling Albert Camus' statement of what it means to be a writer: "The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer." He kept faith with this commitment. Yet during those years he wrote novels, stories, essays and poems that were a bold revelation to his countrymen and women and the world of what suppression and oppression really meant. And trust Achebe to give a new definition of colonialism. His collection of essays, recently reissued as a modern classic, is The Education of a British-protected Child.

Achebe's works do not fear to challenge those post-colonial, independent regimes in Africa who abuse personal power in every possible way – from banning political opposition, to corruption. His novel A Man of the People, a biting satire on corruption in freed African regimes, uses the blade of humour to alert us to official greed and the cant which legitimises it.

His work Chike and the River was republished in 2011. I read it with the sense of extraordinary entry into a brilliant (I do not use that word fashionably or lightly) mind, a writer's continuing achievement of penetrating the variety, possibilities, mystery of being human in the presence not only of one's own people and country, but of the world.

He did not shirk writing of what "I have chosen to call my Middle Passage, my colonial inheritance. To call my experience colonial heritage may surprise some people. But everything is grist to the mill of the artist. True, one grain may differ from another in its powers of nourishment; still, we must … accord appropriate recognition to every grain that comes our way."

What audience, what readers do you have in mind, who is it you are addressing yourself to? The somewhat testy answer is: we write for whoever will read our work.

It surely must mean a great deal to a writer to know that his or her work has reached through prison walls, having been longingly requested and received with difficulty by way of lawyers or rare visitors allowed a political prisoner.

Achebe had that rather special recognition when Nelson Mandela, 27 years behind prison walls, told Achebe what his novels brought to him: "There was a writer named Chinua Achebe in whose company the prison walls fell."


http://m.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/22/chinua-achebe-death-nadine-gordimer

sanusi has contributions which achebe can only dream of (if he has a heart), about sanusis comments this is not the thread to talk about it

nnenna.1:


If you also called Sanusi a nonsense man in light of some of the things he has said about Yorubas I would not even address your drug induced rants.

gratiaeo:
Achebe was an Iroko of integrity : Atiku
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/03/achebe-was-an-iroko-of-integrity-atiku/
How do you think that your opinion count? Go to other media houses and see how he was been celebrating.
When did Nairaland become a yardstick to measure integrity before?

na insult and bad luck for atiku to shower anybody with praise. nuff said

namfav: sanusi has contributions which achebe can only dream of (if he has a heart), about sanusis comments this is not the thread to talk about it

Yorubas are ungrateful- Almdu Ali
oya defend him

Africa in mourning for Chinua Achebe, grandfather of African literature


From Nobel laureates to roadside booksellers, Nigerians expressed their grief and shock at the death at 82 of Chinua Achebe, the literary giant whose works made him a household name and national hero. Many who had worked alongside him wept as they paid tribute, and bookstores in downtown Lagos said his books sold out as news of his death trickled in.

Despite his age and distance from his homeland– he died in Boston, where he had lived for years – Achebe's frequent and often barbed pronouncements against an oil-fed Nigerian elite kept him very much in the national psyche. He further endeared himself to a younger generation of Nigerians weary of corruption, when he twice turned down a national honour in 2004 and 2011.

African literature burst onto the world stage with Achebe's 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, which portrays an Igbo yam farmer's fatal struggle to come to terms with British colonialism in the late 19th century. It remains the best-selling novel ever written by an African author, having sold more than 10-million copies in 50 different languages. Nelson Mandela, who read his books during his 27-year incarceration, once said of him: "He was the writer in whose company the prison walls came down."

Wole Soyinka, a fellow giant of African literature, who was informed by the Achebe family in a dawn phone call, said, "We have lost a brother, a colleague, a trailblazer and a doughty fighter."

Writing for the Guardian's Comment is free section, Soyinka said: "No matter the reality, after the initial shock, and a sense of abandonment, we confidently assert that Chinua lives. His works provide their enduring testimony to the domination of the human spirit over the forces of repression, bigotry, and retrogression."

Speaking from the town of Ogidi where Achebe was born in 1930, village head, Amechi Ekume, said: "There is deep mourning all over the village, both young and old are mourning."

"As we say in Igboland, when an extraordinary person dies, the iroko [African teak] has fallen," said a weeping Dora Akunyili, a former minister who worked with Achebe during his tenure at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Achebe's earlier works focused on the social upheavals wrought by British colonialism. "He was the first of our African writers to tell the story from our own perspective. But even beyond Africa, people who were colonised or oppressed could relate to his stories," said Denja Abdullahi, the vice president of the Association of Nigerian Authors, which was founded by Achebe and other writers in 1981.

Wheelchair-bound since a car accident in 1990, the octogenarian had made time to speak with hundreds of fans during a gruelling national tour to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Things Fall Apart. Abdullahi said, "He was always so welcoming to everybody we met, anytime. He was very humane, very reflective. Even when he wasn't speaking, he just had so much presence."

Speaking of Achebe's impact, Abdullahi said: "He's the father of African literature and children always try to imitate the good qualities of their fathers."

The celebrated Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, last year said she wept when she received a note from Achebe praising her best-selling novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. She was too awed to pluck up the nerve to call him back. Meeting him for the second time, she was again too shy to approach as writers including Toni Morrison and Ha Jin crowded around him backstage during an awards luncheon. "Before I went on stage, he told me, 'Jisie ike [more grease to your elbow]'. I wondered if he fully grasped, if indeed it was possible to, how much his work meant to so many."

Novelists from a younger generation described the freedom to write in their own voices, which Achebe's own writing opened up, and the daunting task of trying to live up to his works.

"In the last five decades, just about every post-colonial African author, one way or another, has been engaged in a creative call-and-response with Chinua Achebe," said author Lola Shoneyin. "You are never weaned off his fiction because it renews itself. It gives you something new every time. He was just that kind of storyteller."

Another novelist, Chika Unigwe, recalled reading Things Fall Apart as a young child: "I like to imagine it was on a Sunday afternoon, right after lunch, lying on my bed. I [clearly] recall … the wonder of reading the world he creates in the book so beautifully. Its power did not hit me until years later when I re-read it as a much older reader. I am immensely grateful to him."

His children's books on African folklore remain popular with Nigerian parents. "I just literally handed The Flute and also The Drum to my daughter two weeks ago. She was glued to them, reading and re-reading them. I was too," said Ifeamaka Umeike of her 7-year-old. "I feel like my granddad died."

Released last year, Achebe's final book, There Was A Country, was a deeply personal account of his experience during the 1967-1970 Biafran civil war.

"Even a lot of [white] people buy it," said Success, hawking books amid the choking Lagos traffic yesterday. "We don't have anymore to sell but people are still asking. That means he is a man of the people."

http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/22/chinua-achebe-grandfather-african-literature-dies-aged-82

Eko Ile:

na insult and bad luck for atiku to shower anybody with praise. nuff said

Sorry, but you are a ___BIG BLACK FOOL___

Pataki:

And yet it was the same minority who voted Achebe into Nairaland Hall of Shame huh?

Go on Saharareporters and see what people are saying of Achebe. It is only on NL that your tribal warlord of a MOD is hiding post of people who spew the truth of Achebe.

again is NL and sahara the world? lmfaooo. I'll use NL for a sample, a website that boost of one million members yet one member on the website can have over 100 id and they count those id as part of the million members. even then that 1 million isn't even a dent in the entire Nigerian population (outside and inside the nation) .dude I'm was watching CNN awhile ago and the memoir of this man was on for two hours. Now im watching the local news and they just started talking about the man right now. let it be known to you, NL isn't sh1t to anyone except for the owner and I'm guessing those like yourself. It is not a respected website even labeled as a 419 dwelling website few months ago by some Usa company. even in Nigeria, excluding SW and north, this website isn't respected or viewed in a positive light anywhere else so I'll say it once more know where your opinion lie, you are a minority. when you're opinion start being reflected international then you have the right to call yourself a majority and as of now, it ain't.

lastly, get off afam's dick. the dude name hasn't even been on here as part of the viewing since i logged on here. your Oam47 on the other had so how is it afam hiding post and if u bothered to check, you'll see the igbo post are the ones hidden.

anyway i'm not about to fight on a man's mourning period. i have respect for the dead and I'm not trying to send my soul towards hell like you lot so this is my last post. I just had to laugh how you think NL and sahara outweighs again igbos, other africans, cnn, bbc, aljerzza, mandela, etc (i.e: the world, not even just national). dude you're comical.

I hate when people compare river with ocean in magnitude/size; d oceanic Achebe RIP. Whose awo? Ignore ignorants

funkymama:

Nigeria ke

Bro, that's taking it too far oh.

What you should be asking about are his contributions to his erosion stricken Ibo land before he died

What legacy did he leave behind for his people?

All he did was stay at Yankee and CRITICISE

We know all Awolowo did for yoruba land. There's no need to go into full details

Achebe was a writer, a very acomplished one and not a politician. Though he ventured into politics at a time, but he left because of the coruption there. About what he did for igbo land, he made the igbo culture a subject of interest all over the world with his books to the extent that the igbo tradition became a reference point to the study of Africa as a whole. Forbes named him the most popular african. Just stop hating

Feed me more: Africa in mourning for Chinua Achebe, grandfather of African literature


From Nobel laureates to roadside booksellers, Nigerians expressed their grief and shock at the death at 82 of Chinua Achebe, the literary giant whose works made him a household name and national hero. Many who had worked alongside him wept as they paid tribute, and bookstores in downtown Lagos said his books sold out as news of his death trickled in.

Despite his age and distance from his homeland– he died in Boston, where he had lived for years – Achebe's frequent and often barbed pronouncements against an oil-fed Nigerian elite kept him very much in the national psyche. He further endeared himself to a younger generation of Nigerians weary of corruption, when he twice turned down a national honour in 2004 and 2011.

African literature burst onto the world stage with Achebe's 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, which portrays an Igbo yam farmer's fatal struggle to come to terms with British colonialism in the late 19th century. It remains the best-selling novel ever written by an African author, having sold more than 10-million copies in 50 different languages. Nelson Mandela, who read his books during his 27-year incarceration, once said of him: "He was the writer in whose company the prison walls came down."

Wole Soyinka, a fellow giant of African literature, who was informed by the Achebe family in a dawn phone call, said, "We have lost a brother, a colleague, a trailblazer and a doughty fighter."

Writing for the Guardian's Comment is free section, Soyinka said: "No matter the reality, after the initial shock, and a sense of abandonment, we confidently assert that Chinua lives. His works provide their enduring testimony to the domination of the human spirit over the forces of repression, bigotry, and retrogression."

Speaking from the town of Ogidi where Achebe was born in 1930, village head, Amechi Ekume, said: "There is deep mourning all over the village, both young and old are mourning."

"As we say in Igboland, when an extraordinary person dies, the iroko [African teak] has fallen," said a weeping Dora Akunyili, a former minister who worked with Achebe during his tenure at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Achebe's earlier works focused on the social upheavals wrought by British colonialism. "He was the first of our African writers to tell the story from our own perspective. But even beyond Africa, people who were colonised or oppressed could relate to his stories," said Denja Abdullahi, the vice president of the Association of Nigerian Authors, which was founded by Achebe and other writers in 1981.

Wheelchair-bound since a car accident in 1990, the octogenarian had made time to speak with hundreds of fans during a gruelling national tour to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Things Fall Apart. Abdullahi said, "He was always so welcoming to everybody we met, anytime. He was very humane, very reflective. Even when he wasn't speaking, he just had so much presence."

Speaking of Achebe's impact, Abdullahi said: "He's the father of African literature and children always try to imitate the good qualities of their fathers."

The celebrated Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, last year said she wept when she received a note from Achebe praising her best-selling novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. She was too awed to pluck up the nerve to call him back. Meeting him for the second time, she was again too shy to approach as writers including Toni Morrison and Ha Jin crowded around him backstage during an awards luncheon. "Before I went on stage, he told me, 'Jisie ike [more grease to your elbow]'. I wondered if he fully grasped, if indeed it was possible to, how much his work meant to so many."

Novelists from a younger generation described the freedom to write in their own voices, which Achebe's own writing opened up, and the daunting task of trying to live up to his works.

"In the last five decades, just about every post-colonial African author, one way or another, has been engaged in a creative call-and-response with Chinua Achebe," said author Lola Shoneyin. "You are never weaned off his fiction because it renews itself. It gives you something new every time. He was just that kind of storyteller."

Another novelist, Chika Unigwe, recalled reading Things Fall Apart as a young child: "I like to imagine it was on a Sunday afternoon, right after lunch, lying on my bed. I [clearly] recall … the wonder of reading the world he creates in the book so beautifully. Its power did not hit me until years later when I re-read it as a much older reader. I am immensely grateful to him."

His children's books on African folklore remain popular with Nigerian parents. "I just literally handed The Flute and also The Drum to my daughter two weeks ago. She was glued to them, reading and re-reading them. I was too," said Ifeamaka Umeike of her 7-year-old. "I feel like my granddad died."

Released last year, Achebe's final book, There Was A Country, was a deeply personal account of his experience during the 1967-1970 Biafran civil war.

"Even a lot of [white] people buy it," said Success, hawking books amid the choking Lagos traffic yesterday. "We don't have anymore to sell but people are still asking. That means he is a man of the people."

http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/22/chinua-achebe-grandfather-african-literature-dies-aged-82

Death no get respect

Zona.com:

Achebe was a writer, a very acomplished one and not a politician. Though he ventured into politics at a time, but he left because of the coruption there. About what he did for igbo land, he made the igbo culture a subject of interest all over the world with his books to the extent that the igbo tradition became a reference point to the study of Africa as a whole. Forbes named him the most popular african. Just stop hating

na beans. all this ashebe gra gra is all take noise. if the man don enter iboland, you people go don kidnap am for money or dump the bitter old man inside some osu river...lmao

[size=18pt]Ghana Novelist[/size]

Ghanaian writer Amma Ata Aidoo has described the death of renowned Nigerian novelist and writer Professor Chinua Achebe as a global calamity.

The renowned Nigerian novelist and writer died last night at a hospital in Boston in the US at age 82.

Chinua Achebe, known for some bestselling books like “Things Fall Apart”, had been ill for a while.

Until his death, Prof Achebe was lecturing at the David and Marianna Fisher University and also a Professor of African Studies at Brown University.

Speaking to Citi News Ghanaian writer and a colleague of Chinua Achebe at Brown University, Amma Atta Aidoo has noted that "at this time apart from acknowledging what a giant and a massive source of inspiration that" Chinua Achebe was, his loss is a great one to the whole of Africa.

“It is a massive loss not only to us and for us as writers and artist but a world loss and a global calamity,” she said.

[size=16pt]Tribute to Chinua Achebe: A Life Lived in Collected Poems, Novels and Short stories[/size]

Don't let him die" was my prayer to God when I heard you stood between the precipice of life and death.

But now all those at "Home and Exile" will have to live with this great loss.

Chinua Achebe! Mr. "Things fall apart" who never failed to impart.

Chinua Achebe! You great literary tree which stood mightily on the African landscape.

Your wisdom was branches which gave respite and shade to the wandering African who in an era needed rediscovery.

You showed us that "There Was a Country" and highlighted traditions; you thrilled us with your talent.

Ikemefuna, Okwonko and Amalinze the cat became characters you placed in our minds eye though we never met them.

You made literary warriors out of this generation because you gave us the "Arrow of God".

I remember when you took us on a tour to see the "Anthills of the Savannah".

Ohhhhhh I remember that day! It was then that I realized you were a "Man of the People".

But now you are gone. You have climbed the ladder of death.

You left unannounced. How can we be "No longer at ease"? Achebe how?

It is "Morning Yet on Creation Day" but this day chose to be your death day.

We wish we could escort you along "Dead Men's Path" but it is a place we must all bid our time to go.

Now that you are gone, we wish there will be "Another Africa" - an Africa that will have more "Hopes and less Impediments".

An Africa where "Vultures" will not scavenge what the imperialist plundered; and where the "The Trouble With Nigeria" will be the concern of all its neighbours.

Chief Achebe! Tears overflow the banks of our eyes and sooner or latter it will stream down our faces like the mighty river Niger.

"The Flute" you gave us still sounds but the song it makes now is one which breaks the heart and crushes the spirit of man.

"The Drum" beat again this morning but the sound thereof was one which didn't announce another great feat by you.

It gave a clarion call to all that you have gone to sit with the ancestors.

And so together with all free people the world over, the "Refugee Mother and Child", we shall mourn your demise.

Fare thee well great one. Your life was one lived well captured in Collected Poems, Novels and Short stories.

Felix Nana Egyir Baidoo LixBaidoo@gmail.com

An IROKO has fallen.

[size=20pt]The world mourns author Chinua Achebe[/size]
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-the-world-mourns-chinua-achebe-20130322,0,2748650.story

In Lagos and London and many other places, the world mourned the great African novelist Chinua Achebe, who died Thursday in Boston at 82.

Achebe was best known to American readers for his novel “Things Fall Apart.” Published in London in 1958, it tells a story set against the backdrop of the sunset of British colonial rule in Nigeria. It was translated into dozens of languages.

It was in his famous novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ that many Africans saw themselves in literature and arts at the time when most of the writing was about Africans but not by Africans," South African President Jacob Zuma said

Achebe wrote five novels and many essays and works of criticism. In an appreciation in the New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch wrote: “As a storyteller, as a voice of his nation, as a cultural impresario, an intellectual combatant and provocateur, Achebe gained with age the status in Nigeria of a bard and a sage that the modern world rarely affords to writers.”

When Achebe won the Man Booker International Prize in 2007, South African novelist and friend Nadine Gordimer said, "Chinua Achebe's early work made him the father of modern African literature as an integral part of world literature.'

Upon learning of his death, Gordimer offered this advice: "read, read, read all his work, from 'Things Fall Apart' to his last work."

In Africa, many leaders remembered Achebe as a man whose works helped define the African spirit.

Nelson Mandela said that during his time in prison, Achebe was a writer "in whose company the prison walls fell down."

“We have lost a great son and the 'Father of African Literature,'" said Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga

While he was alive, Achebe declined to accept many accolades from the Nigerian government—in the 1960s, he was Minister of Information for the short-lived Republic of Biafra during its failed war of succession from Nigeria. But on Friday, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan praised Achebe as “an acclaimed writer, scholar, tutor, cultural icon, nationalist and artist of the very first rank.”

Earlier this week, a bomb blast killed 22 members of Achebe's ethnic group, the Igbo people, in the Nigerian city of Kano. The Nigerian writers Wole Soyinka and J.P. Clark cited that attack in their farewell to Achebe in the Guardian

“We have lost a brother, a colleague, a trailblazer and a doughty fighter,” the wrote. "[We] cannot help wondering if the recent insensate massacre of Chinua's people in Kano, only a few days ago, hastened the fatal undermining of [his] resilient will," they wrote.

Penguin Books published Achebe’s final book, the memoir "There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra,” in 2012. Simon Winder, publishing director at Penguin in the U.K., called Achebe an "utterly remarkable man."

"Chinua Achebe is the greatest of African writers and we are all desolate to hear of his death," he said

[size=20pt]NYTIMES Mourns Chinua Achebe[/size]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/world/africa/chinua-achebe-nigerian-writer-dies-at-82.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author and towering man of letters whose internationally acclaimed fiction sought to revive African literature and rewrite the story of the continent that had long been told by Western voices, died on Thursday in Boston. He was 82.
Related

ArtsBeat: Chinua Achebe and the ‘Bravery of Lions’ (March 22, 2013)

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His agent in London said he died after a brief illness. Mr. Achebe had been using a wheelchair since a car accident in Nigeria in 1990 left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Mr. Achebe caught the world’s attention with his first novel, “Things Fall Apart.” Published in 1958, when he was 28, the story would become a classic of world literature and required reading in university courses, selling more than 10 million copies in 45 languages.

The story, a brisk 215 pages, was inspired by his own family history as part of the Igbo nation of southeastern Nigeria, a people victimized by the racism of British colonial administrators and then by the brutality of military dictators from other Nigerian ethnic groups.

“Things Fall Apart” gave expression to Mr. Achebe’s first stirrings of anti-colonialism and a desire to use literature as a weapon against Western biases. As if to sharpen it with irony, he borrowed from the Western canon itself in using as its title a line from Yeats’s apocalyptic poem"The Second Coming.”

“In the end, I began to understand,” Mr. Achebe later wrote. “There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like.”

Though Mr. Achebe spent his later decades teaching at American universities, most recently Brown, his writings — novels, stories, poems, essays and memoirs — were almost invariably rooted in the countryside and cities of his native Nigeria. His most memorable fictional characters were buffeted and bewildered by the competing pulls of traditional African culture and invasive Western values.

“Things Fall Apart,” which is set in the late 19th century, tells the story of Okonkwo, who rises from poverty to become a wealthy farmer and Igbo village leader. British colonial rule throws his life into turmoil, and in the end, unable to adapt, he explodes in frustration, killing an African in the employ of the British and then committing suicide.

The acclaim for “Things Fall Apart” was not unanimous. Some British critics thought it idealized pre-colonial African culture at the expense of the former empire.

“An offended and highly critical English reviewer in a London Sunday paper titled her piece cleverly, I must admit, ‘Hurray to Mere Anarchy!’ ” Mr. Achebe wrote in “Home and Exile,” a 200o collection of autobiographical essays. Some critics found his early novels to be stronger on ideology than on narrative interest. But his stature grew, until he was considered a literary and political beacon, influencing generations of African writers as well as many in the West.

“It would be impossible to say how ‘Things Fall Apart’ influenced African writing,” the Princeton scholarKwame Anthony Appiah once wrote. “It would be like asking how Shakespeare influenced English writers or Pushkin influenced Russians.”

Mr. Appiah, a professor of African studies, found an “intense moral energy” in Mr. Achebe’s work, adding that it “captures the sense of threat and loss that must have faced many Africans as empire invaded and disrupted their lives.”

Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist and Nobel laureate, hailed Mr. Achebe in a review in The New York Times in 1998, calling him “a novelist who makes you laugh and then catch your breath in horror — a writer who has no illusions but is not disillusioned.”

Mr. Achebe’s political thinking evolved from blaming colonial rule for Africa’s woes to frank criticism of African rulers and the African citizens who tolerated their corruption and violence. Indeed, it was Nigeria’s civil war in the 1960s and then its military dictatorship in the 1980s and ‘90s that forced Mr. Achebe abroad.

In his writings and teaching Mr. Achebe sought to reclaim the continent from Western literature, which he felt had reduced it to an alien, barbaric and frightening land devoid of its own art and culture. He took particular exception to"Heart of Darkness,"the novel byJoseph Conrad, whom he thought “a thoroughgoing racist.”

Conrad relegated “Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind,” Mr. Achebe argued in his essay “An Image of Africa.”

“I grew up among very eloquent elders,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2008. “In the village, or even in the church, which my father made sure we attended, there were eloquent speakers.” That eloquence was not reflected in Western books about Africa, he said, but he understood the challenge in trying to rectify the portrayal.

“You know that it’s going to be a battle to turn it around, to say to people, ‘That’s not the way my people respond in this situation, by unintelligible grunts, and so on; they would speak.’ And it is that speech that I knew I wanted to be written down.”

Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born on Nov. 16, 1930, in Ogidi, an Igbo village. His father became a Christian and worked for a missionary teacher in various parts of Nigeria before returning to the village. As a student Chinua immersed himself in Western literature. At the University College of Ibadan, whose professors were Europeans, he read Shakespeare, Milton, Defoe, Swift, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Tennyson. But the turning point in his education was the required reading of"Mister Johnson,"a 1952 novel set in Nigeria and written by an Anglo-Irishman, Joyce Cary.

The protagonist is a docile Nigerian whose British master ultimately shoots and kills him. Like reviewers in the Western press, Mr. Achebe’s white professors praised it as one of the best novels ever written about Africa. But Mr. Achebe and his classmates responded with “exasperation at this bumbling idiot of a character,” he wrote.

He soon joined a generation of West African writers who in the 1950s were coming to the realization that Western literature was holding the continent captive.

A fellow Nigerian, Amos Tutuola, opened the floodgates with his 1952 novel, “The Palm-Wine Drinkard.” After graduating from college in 1953, Mr. Achebe moved to London, where he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation while writing stories. It was in London that he wrote “Things Fall Apart,” in longhand.

After returning to Nigeria to revise the manuscript, he mailed it — the only existing copy — to a London typing service, which promptly misplaced it, filling Mr. Achebe with despair. It was discovered only months later.

Publishers initially passed on the manuscript, doubting that African fiction would sell, until an adviser at the Heinemann publishing house seized on it as a work of brilliance.

Like most of these writers, Mr. Achebe plumbed the image of village innocence corrupted by the Western-influenced big city.

In his second novel, “No Longer at Ease” in 1960, he tells the story of Okonkwo’s grandson, Obi, who learns to fit into British colonial society. Raised as a Christian and educated in England, Obi abandons the countryside for a job as a civil servant in Lagos, the capital. Cut off from traditional values, he succumbs to greed and in the end is prosecuted for graft.

In his third novel, “Arrow of God” (1964), Mr. Achebe reverts to the setting of an Igbo village in the early 20th century. The village priest, Ezeulu, sends his son, Oduche, to be educated by Christian missionaries in the hope that he will learn British ways and thus help protect his community. Instead, Oduche becomes a convert to colonialism and attacks Igbo religion and culture.

The Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, shattered Mr. Achebe’s hopes for a more promising post-colonial future, and deeply affected his literary output. The war began in January 1966 when Igbo army officers killed the prime minister and other officials and seized power. Seven months later, the insurgents were ousted in a counter-coup by military commanders from the Muslim northern region.

Before the year ended, Muslim troops had massacred some 30,000 Igbos living in the north. The Igbos then seceded from Nigeria, declaring the southeastern region the independent Republic of Biafra. Civil war raged through 1970 until government troops invaded and crushed the secessionists.

Mr. Achebe’s fourth novel, “A Man of the People,” published in early 1966, had predicted this course of events with such accuracy that the military government in Lagos decided he must have been a conspirator in the first coup, an accusation he denied. Mr. Achebe fled, settling in Britain with his wife, Christiana, their two sons, Ikechukwu and Chidi, and two daughters, Chinelo and Nwando. (Information about this survivors was not immediately available.)

After the civil war, Mr. Achebe returned to Nigeria for two years before accepting faculty posts in the 1970s at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut. He returned home again in 1979 to teach English at the University of Nigeria.

The civil war was the theme of many of writings during these years. Among the most prominent were a collection of poetry, “Beware Soul Brother” (1971), which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and a short story collection,"Girls at War,” which appeared in 1972.

But for more than 20 years a case of writer’s block kept him from producing another novel. He attributed the dry spell to emotional trauma that had lingered after the civil war.

“The novel seemed like a frivolous thing to be doing,” he told The Washington Post in 1988.

That year, Mr. Achebe finally published his fifth novel, “Anthills of the Savannah,” the story of three former school chums in a fictional country modeled after Nigeria. One of them becomes a military dictator, another is appointed minister of information, and the third is named editor of the leading newspaper. All meet violent ends.

The novel was widely admired. Discussing it in 1988 in The New York Review of Books, the Scottish journalist Neal Ascherson wrote: “Chinua Achebe says, with implacable honesty, that Africa itself is to blame, and that there is no safety in excuses that place the fault in the colonial past or in the commercial and political manipulations of the First World.”

Mr. Achebe barely had time to savor the acclaim when he was seriously injured in a car accident in 1990 outside Lagos. Paralyzed below the waist, he received medical treatment in London and moved to the United States, taking a teaching post at Bard College in the Hudson River valley, where he remained until 2009. In 2007 he received the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement. Last fall, he published “There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra.”

The return of civilian, democratic rule to Nigeria in 1999 prompted Mr. Achebe to visit the country for the first time in almost a decade. He met the newly elected president,Olusegun Obasanjo, and cautiously praised him as the best possible leader “at this time.” He also traveled to his native village, Ogidi.

He returned to the United States, but his heart remained in his homeland, he said.

“People have sometimes asked me if I have thought of writing a novel about America, since I have now been living here some years,” Mr. Achebe wrote in “Home and Exile.” “My answer has always been that America has enough novelists writing about here, and Nigeria too few.”


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 22, 2013

Seun your Nairaland have become poo. No more respect, even 4 a great man like Achebe
All your mods are tribal bigot. You need to live above ethnicity sentiment.
As a Yoruba which you are we know that you must have some grudges on Achebe's book but you don't have to sacrifice your Biz on the alter of ethnicity sentiment

I just got off the phone with family members in Ogidi my home town and home town of Prof Acheba, the whole Town is in shock and people are just in a daze over the news of our belove Professor.

From AFP France

Mourning for Achebe in a country he was often at odds with

Acclaimed Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe is pictured on January 19, 2009 in Abuja upon his return to Nigeria for the firrst time in over 10 years. The death of Achebe led to an outpouring of grief and tributes Friday in his native Nigeria, a country whose government he harshly criticised over the years.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on November 11, 2012 in Abuja. The death of acclaimed novelist Chinua Achebe led to an outpouring of grief and tributes Friday in his native Nigeria, a country whose government he harshly criticised over the years. Nonetheless, Nigerian officials, including President Goodluck Jonathan, issued statements in praise of the author.
AFP - The death of acclaimed novelist Chinua Achebe led to an outpouring of grief and tributes Friday in his native Nigeria, a country whose government he harshly criticised over the years.

The 82-year-old, who was confined to a wheelchair after a 1990 accident and lived in the United States in recent years, had an uneasy relationship with Africa's most populous country, twice rejecting an offer to grant him one of the nation's highest honours.

He had regularly lashed out at the corruption and misrule in a nation with Africa's biggest oil industry, but where deep poverty persists and basic infrastructure is still missing, including a paltry supply of electricity.

Nonetheless, Nigerian officials, including President Goodluck Jonathan, issued statements in praise of the author of the seminal novel "Things Fall Apart".

Jonathan said Achebe "fearlessly spoke the truth as he saw it and became, as he advanced in age, a much revered national icon and conscience of the nation who will be eternally honoured for his contributions to national discourse as well as the immense fame and glory he brought to his fatherland."

A spokesman for the governor of Nigeria's Anambra state, where Achebe was born, said "the world has lost one of the finest writers, and Africa has lost a literary gem."

"The governor is trying to travel to the United States to take part in the arrangement of his burial," Mike Udah said.

While he was known worldwide mostly for "Things Fall Apart," a novel about the collision of British colonialism and his native Igbo culture in southeastern Nigeria, Achebe also wrote non-fiction that took aim at Nigeria's problems.

His essay "The Trouble With Nigeria," published in 1983, was one example.

He rejected national awards in 2004 and 2011.

In 2004 in particular, he spoke of myriad problems and said the state of the country was "too dangerous for silence."

While putting him at odds with Nigerian authorities, such stances won him praise and admiration among activists, fellow writers and reformers.

Nigerians flooded Twitter with tributes on Friday as news of his death spread.

Tolu Ogunlesi, a young Nigerian poet and journalist, tweeted that Achebe "wrote and did great things. One of the greatest: twice (2004 & 2011) turning down Nigeria's dubious national 'honours'."

He has served as an inspiration to a long list of writers, including Nigeria's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 35, whose acclaimed novel "Half of a Yellow Sun" depicted the country's 1967-70 civil war.

Adichie and Achebe are both Igbos from Nigeria's eastern region, which sought to secede from the country largely in response to the massacres of Igbos in the north, leading to the war.

Adichie has called his praise of her work "the validation of a writer whose work had validated me."

Damian Opata, former head of the English department at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where Achebe once taught, said "we are in sorrow here in the department."

"He was my teacher, and later my colleague lecturer," he said. "His humility knew no bounds."

Chima Anyadike, head of English department at Nigeria's Obafemi Awolowo University, called Achebe "one of the best minds that I have ever come across."

It is unclear if Achebe will now be buried in Nigeria following his death in the United States, though he has left a huge legacy.

Ken Saro Wiwa Jr, whose father was a renowned environmental activist infamously executed under the regime of dictator Sani Abacha in 1995, remembered that Achebe was among those who defended him

"To have someone who has respect to stand up for the voice of justice was very, very important," said Wiwa Jr, now an adviser to the Nigerian president.

He noted that Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, along with Nelson Mandela and Achebe were among those who sought to intervene.

"Between the three of them, those are three people who represent everything that we want Africa to be," he said.

"When he (Achebe) came on board, it was of course a great sense of comfort."

Speaking of Achebe's most famous novel, Wiwa Jr said "'Things Fall Apart' was an affirmation of African values ... what those values were and how enduring they can be."

OgidiBoy: I just got off the phone with family members in Ogidi my home town and home town of Prof Acheba, the whole Town is in shock and people are just in a daze over the news of our belove Professor.

The whole world is in shock of his passing. He has solidified himself among the world's literary greats.

TheBookWorm:

The whole world is in shock of his passing. He has solidified himself among the world's literary greats.

he was in his 80's though so i don't understand why people are shock. Eventually old life would take him. he'll greatly be missed

One_Naira:


he was in his 80's though so i don't understand why people are shock. Eventually old life would take him. he'll greatly be missed

Even though he was in his 80s, it was a sudden death. It was not because of some long and protracted illness.

OgidiBoy: I just got off the phone with family members in Ogidi my home town and home town of Prof Acheba, the whole Town is in shock and people are just in a daze over the news of our belove Professor.

The Whole World is in Shock from South Africa to Britain ,from India to Pakistan to From Kenya to Canada, From Australia to Ghana the literary world is shocked, the whole media world is awash of the passing away of this Legend the only people not shocked are the small frustrated minority in an obscure part of the world who seem to happy that a man that exposed their Hypocrisy and their wickedness is no more

[size=20pt]Kenyans mourn Nigerian literary icon Chinua Achebe[/size]
http://ugandadailyeye.jibostudios.com/2013/03/kenyans-mourn-nigerian-literary-icon-chinua-achebe/

Please let us respect the dead.

[size=20pt]Uganda Diasporans Mourns Achebe[/size]

Obituary | Father of African Literature’ Chinua Achebe Dies In Boston Aged 82
http://www.ugandandiasporanews.com/2013/03/22/obituary-father-of-african-literature-chinua-achebe-dies-in-boston-aged-82/

Chinua Achebe, 'father of modern African literature,' dies at 82

[size=20pt]PAKISTAN Mourns Achebe[/size]


Nigerian Author Chinua Achebe Dead at 82

http://pakistan.onepakistan.com.pk/news/world/193493-nigerian-author-chinua-achebe-dead-at-82.html

wat a great lose... RIP