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Chinua Achebe (1930–2013)

Autor(a) de Things Fall Apart

53+ Works 28,381 Membros 576 Críticas 44 Favorited
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About the Author

Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born on November 16, 1930 in Ogidi, Nigeria. He studied English, history and theology at University College in Ibadan from 1948 to 1953. After receiving a second-class degree, he taught for a while before joining the Nigeria Broadcasting Service in 1954. He was mostrar mais working as a broadcaster when he wrote his first two novels, and then quit working to devote himself to writing full time. Unfortunately his literary career was cut short by the Nigerian Civil War. During this time he supported the ill-fated Biafrian cause and served abroad as a diplomat. He and his family narrowly escaped assassination. After the civil war, he abandoned fiction for a period in favor of essays, short stories, and poetry. His works include Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, and There Was a Country. He also wrote four children's books including Chike and the River and How the Leopard Got His Claws. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize for his "overall contribution to fiction on the world stage." He also worked as a professor of literature in Nigeria and the United States. He died following a brief illness on March 21, 2013 at the age of 82. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Image credit: Photograph by Stuart C. Shapiro; used by permission

Séries

Obras por Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart (1958) 20,532 exemplares
No Longer at Ease (1960) 1,503 exemplares
Arrow of God (1964) 1,271 exemplares
Anthills of the Savannah (1987) 1,113 exemplares
A Man of the People (1966) 858 exemplares
Girls at War (1972) 278 exemplares
Home and Exile (2001) 216 exemplares
African Short Stories (1985) — Editor; Contribuidor — 145 exemplares
Chike and the River (1966) 142 exemplares
Africas Tarnished Name (2018) 126 exemplares
Collected Poems (1969) 96 exemplares
How the Leopard Got His Claws (1972) 82 exemplares
The Trouble with Nigeria (1984) 63 exemplares
Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories (1992) — Editor — 55 exemplares
Beware Soul Brother (1971) 50 exemplares
OCR GCSE Story Collection (2002) 21 exemplares
The Drum (1977) 13 exemplares
The Flute: A Children's Story (1977) 8 exemplares
Dead Men's Path 4 exemplares
Už nikdy klid 2 exemplares
The world of the Ogbanje (1986) 2 exemplares
Civil Peace 2 exemplares
Vengeful Creditor [short story] (2016) 2 exemplares
Things fall apart 1 exemplar
Human Mine Sweeper 1 exemplar

Associated Works

The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (1983) — Contribuidor — 1,130 exemplares
Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (2008) — Prefácio — 353 exemplares
Telling Tales (2004) — Contribuidor — 344 exemplares
The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories (1986) — Contribuidor — 339 exemplares
The World's Greatest Short Stories (2006) — Contribuidor — 264 exemplares
Under African Skies: Modern African Stories (1997) — Contribuidor — 92 exemplares
Rotten English: A Literary Anthology (2007) — Contribuidor — 75 exemplares
The Anchor Book of Modern African Stories (2002) — Prefácio — 51 exemplares
One World of Literature (1992) — Contribuidor — 24 exemplares
African Literature: an anthology of criticism and theory (2007) — Contribuidor — 23 exemplares
Currents in Fiction (1974) — Contribuidor — 20 exemplares
AQA Anthology (2002) — Autor, algumas edições19 exemplares
Wonders: Writings and Drawings for the Child in Us All (1980) — Contribuidor — 18 exemplares
An African Quilt: 24 Modern African Stories (2012) — Contribuidor — 17 exemplares
African Rhapsody: Short Stories of the Contemporary African Experience (1994) — Prefácio, algumas edições16 exemplares
Masters of British Literature, Volume B (2007) — Contribuidor — 16 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Nome legal
Achebe, Albert Chinụalụmọgụ
Data de nascimento
1930-11-16
Data de falecimento
2013-03-21
Localização do túmulo
Ogidi, Anambra State, Nigeria
Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
Nigeria
Local de nascimento
Ogidi, Anambra State, Nigeria Protectorate
Local de falecimento
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Locais de residência
Ogidi, Nigeria
Nekede, Nigeria
Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria
Oba, Nigeria
Lagos, Nigeria
Enugu, Nigeria (mostrar todos 12)
Aba, Biafra
Nsukku, Nigeria
Nneobi, Nigeria
Annandale, New York, USA
Massachusetts, USA
Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Educação
University College, Ibadan, Nigeria
University of London
Ocupações
broadcaster
professor
novelist
short-story writer
poet
school teacher
Relações
Okigbo, Christopher (friend)
Organizações
Anambra State University of Technology
Bard College
Brown University
Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation
Prémios e menções honrosas
Booker Prize (2007)
Visiting professorship (University of Massachusetts-Amherst ∙ University of Connecticut ∙ UCLA)
Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (2002)
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Honorary Fellowship.
Nigerian National Merit Award

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Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and was a graduate of University College, Ibadan.

His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad.

From 1972 to 1976, and again in 1987 to 1988, Mr. Achebe was Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and also for one year at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Cited in the London Sunday Times as one of the "1,000 Makers of the Twentieth Century" for defining "a modern African literature that was truly African" and thereby making "a major contribution to world literature," Chinua Achebe published novels, short stories, essays and children's books. [adapted from Things Fall Apart, c1959, 1994 printing Anchor Books Ed.]

Mr. Achebe received numerous honors from around the world including more than twenty honorary doctorates from universities in England, Scotland, the United States, Canada, and Nigeria.

Latterly Mr. Achebe lived with his wife in Annandale, New York, where they both taught at Bard College. They had four children.

Membros

Discussions

AFRICAN NOVEL CHALLENGE JULY 2023 - ACHEBE / OKRI em 75 Books Challenge for 2023 (Agosto 2023)
Things Fall Apart Chapters 18-25/END em Geeks who love the Classics (Fevereiro 2022)
Things Fall Apart Chapters 9-17 em Geeks who love the Classics (Fevereiro 2022)
Things Fall Apart Chapters 1-8 em Geeks who love the Classics (Janeiro 2022)
Things Fall Apart Jan-March 2022 Housekeeping Items em Geeks who love the Classics (Janeiro 2022)
November 2020: Chinua Achebe em Monthly Author Reads (Dezembro 2020)

Críticas

Although the main theme of this novel is the colonialization of Africa by Great Britain in the late 19th century, it also exposes the folly of hubris, particularly of its protagonist, Okonkwo. The first part of the story centers on Okonkwo's life in his agriculture-centric society, Umuofia, and its kinship ties, superstitions, and rituals. Okonkwo has some reason to be proud: he pulled himself up by the bootstraps, so to speak, not having the same advantages as his Igbo clansmen because his father was considered lazy and contemptible, and he suffered an outcast's death. Okonkwo fear of failure haunts him throughout, and he becomes hard man with an inflexible will and a fiery temper that he blames on his personal god because of the shame his father brought to the family. Although he achieves great success in his fatherland, Okonkwo is ultimately banished for seven years and seeks shelter in his motherland, Mbanta, where he again prospers but still longs to return to his fatherland. Upon his return to Umuofia, he finds much has changed, largely as the result of the British missionaries and administrators who are trying to "civilize" the non-Christians. Achebe explores the impact of colonialism on different aspects of village life and the different categories of villagers. It was refreshing to see colonialism portrayed through the eyes of the colonized, not of the colonizers, as in Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. To be, the real reason things fell apart was a failure of communication between the Western interlopers and the natives.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
bschweiger | 430 outras críticas | Feb 4, 2024 |
An engaging story about an African man, his family and tribe. Achebe depicts the brutality of the animistic, pagan patriarchal, honour-shame culture before colonisation. When the colonisers arrive they bring their own form of brutalitiy coloaked beneath British law and order:

It is a story of contrasts: strong vs weak, masculine vs feminine, fortune vs failure, pagan animism vs Christianity, African tribal culture vs Western colonisation.

Achebe depicts the first missionary to the tribe in contradistiction to the colonisers. The Christianity that arrives is bold yet gentle, confident yet wiling to suffer. In contrast to the darkness of pagan animism, the missionaries bring freedom from the fear of evils spirits, curses and capricious gods. They welcome outcasts and adopt twin babies who have been left to die in the jungle. They speak of a Father God full of love in a culture where fathers were harsh and unyielding. The missionaries weren’t perfect (especially the second who arrives later in Achebe’s story), but Achebe makes the point that the Christianity the missionaries brought enriched the lives of the Africans.

The final sentance in the novel reveals what Achebe thinks his work is about:

"The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner should never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from a tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger."

I found this review helpful: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/830031498
… (mais)
1 vote
Assinalado
toby.neal | 430 outras críticas | Jan 9, 2024 |
Things Fall Apart is fascinating as it depicts what it felt like living in a clan in the SE part of Nigeria on the cusp of British colonization during the late 19th century. Written from the point of view of of someone living then and there, it personalizes that part of the world in a way I hadn't before experienced in literature.
The plot follows the story of Okonkwo, a man who worked to rescue his family name from his father’s disgraceful failure, becomes successful in his Igbo Chinua Achebe details the clan’s parameters of rules, etiquette, beliefs and hierarchies and shows via internal monologues the difficulty of questioning the rules and going against the flow.
Okonkwo holds fast to his deeply held machismo ideal and derides any man who acts womanish, a trait he sees in his own son. He prides himself on his successes, and plans to become a great leader but he himself breaks a rule that changes the course of his life. Eventually the clan – who had never seen or dealt with white people – are confronted with the influx of Christian missionaries and British political envoys. The intercultural clash brought in by the colonists is psychologically and physically brutal.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
dcvance | 430 outras críticas | Dec 21, 2023 |
Katie lent this book to a friend at GMU 12/2023
 
Assinalado
KellyObrien | 430 outras críticas | Dec 18, 2023 |

Listas

1950s (1)
Read (1)
Africa (2)
My TBR (2)
AP Lit (1)

Prémios

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Ahmed Essop Contributor
Grace Ogot Contributor
Bessie Head Contributor
Mafika Gwala Contributor
L.B. Honwana Contributor
David Owoyele Contributor
Tayeb Salih Contributor
Dambudzo Marechera Contributor
Jomo Kenyatta Contributor
Ezekiel Mphahlele Contributor
Odun Balogun Contributor
Ama Ata Aidoo Contributor
Leonard Kibera Contributor
Kojo Laing Contributor
Ben Okri Contributor
Lindiwe Mabuza Contributor
Okey Chigbo Contributor
Assia Djebar Contributor
Tijan M. Sallah Contributor
M. G. Vassanji Contributor
Njabulo S. Ndebele Contributor
Jamal Mahjoub Contributor
Kyalo Mativo Contributor
Steve Chimombo Contributor
EB Dongala Contributor
Ba'bila Mutia Contributor
Mia Couto Contributor
Daniel Mandishona Contributor
Jan Dicker Translator
Edel Rodriguez Cover designer, Cover artist
Kwame Anthony Appiah Foreword, Introduction
Ian Serraillier Introduction
Biyi Bandele Introduction
Jaap Dicker Translator
Uche Okeke Illustrator
Bruce Onobrakpeya Illustrator
Peter Edwards Cover artist
Gudrun Honke Translator
Charles Keeping Cover artist
Robert Dorsman Translator
Maya Jaggi Introduction
John Dyke Cover artist
Karl Maier Introduction
Victor Ekpuk Cover artist
Don Hemerman Photographer
Mary Grandpre Illustrator
George Mogaka Illustrator
Shyam Varma Cover designer

Estatísticas

Obras
53
Also by
19
Membros
28,381
Popularidade
#711
Avaliação
3.8
Críticas
576
ISBN
412
Línguas
26
Marcado como favorito
44

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