₦airaland Forum

einstein_e:
In this era, books compete with movies, games and social media. Gone are the days that a writer could spend ten pages exploring literary techniques and being obsessed with his own voice. For a novel to appeal to people now, it has to tell a STORY. Most Nigerian writers fail in this respect. They want to write about civil wars and poverty and bad government. They should write essays, instead. A novelist writes a story and entertains.

SEFAGO:
Maybe there is a reason why? Not so good literature 

Anyways, whether literary critics are wrong or not- Nigeria seems to be the home of at least West African literature and possibly African literature maybe we dont appreciate our writers well enough because what they right about if familiar to us.

I was reading Beast of no nation by Uzodinma Iweala. Book read like crap because he was just using his life experience growing up in Nigerian and reflecting it on the main character (Agu I think it is). It would make sense since most authors use their life experience to construct stories. But boring to me because I grew up and went to school in Nigeria and knew the whole drill. But would probably sound exotic and interesting to a westerner.

Infact I think this is one of the main reasons why I dont read most nigerian books, they are not exotic enough adn hit too close to home to be too interesting.

kunlenki:
There is no gain saying the fact the 'things fall apart' is one of the best novels in Africa. Be that as it may, it portrays a very rich African culture and traditions. There way of life is vividly depicted in such a way that one will clearly see the richness and uniqueness of the Africans. It should also be pointed out that no culture is without its pros and cons. What is most important is that we should pass the good part of these culture and tradition to our future generation. The question of whether the missionaries have done us well or bad is an issue of colonization and they should be credited for that. At for exposing us! What we should do is to divest ourselves from Western category by picking the good ones among and jettisoning the bad ones.
To me, which is subjective though, Achebe is not trying to show the barbaric or inhuman nature of Africans, rather, he intends to show the richness of Africa. By my usage of richness, it does not hang on weather right or wrong but uniqueness of it. also note that right and wrong is subjective.

Brisingr:
the missionaries meddling destroyed the stability in umofia.Blood sacrifices and warring used to be part of the culture of the people of west Africa at this particular era in which the book is based it might have been abolished with time but we will neva know thanks to missionaries.Trying to portray a utopian society was never the motive of the author but rather a society with it share of bad and good

Brisingr:
I do not

its a book at least to me that shows the struggle between change and tradition how much is good and how much is toxic for a society.every culture has it good and bad u just mentioned the bad ones