Achebe, Chinua 1930–

Chinua Achebe 1930–

Nigerian writer

At a Glance…

Nationalist Response to Colonial Rule

Writing to Preserve Tradition

Independence, Disenchantment

Civil War in Nigeria

Peace Brings Cautious Hope for Change

Selected writings

Sources

In his 1987 novel Anthills of the Savannah, leading world writer Chinua Achebe examines a network of close relationships surrounding the fall of a dictator in a fictional African nation. The novel ends in an ambiguous chaos and foreshadows the coming of yet another, similar military ruler, rather than the installation of a new kind of government—one that is more accountable to the needs of the nation’s people. In a 1991 essay in Modern Fiction Studies, Robin Ikegami noted that at the center of this kind of political upheaval lies the potential power of a storyteller: through fiction, writers like Achebe highlight the need for change in a land of recurring, dismally oppressive governments.

Achebe is a Nigerian writer whose role as a socially committed storyteller is drawn from his ethnic Igbo traditions. He has written a number of novels, short stories, poems, essays, and articles, garnering worldwide critical acclaim and popular success. In addition to his numerous awards for his writing, including the 1972 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, Achebe has received more than twenty honorary doctorates from universities around the world. In an interview published in the scholarly journal Callaloo, literary critic Charles H. Rowell told Achebe that “here in the United States, those of us who read twentieth century world literature think of you as one of the most important writers in this era.”

Achebe explained his literary goals to Callaloo by describing an Igbo festival of art that celebrates humanity in all of its good and evil aspects. In this ceremony, called the mbari, art is made with the involvement of the community and in the service of the community. The festival itself is called into being by an Igbo goddess named “Ala” or “Ani,” who serves a double role as earth goddess and goddess of creativity, and who is responsible for both creativity and morality in the world. “So obviously by putting the two portfolios, if you like, of art and morality in her domain, a statement is being made about the meaning of art,” Achebe said. “Art cannot be in the service of destruction, cannot be in the service of oppression, cannot be in the service of evil.” The author’s writings reflect his belief in the need for all stories to have a purpose and teach a lesson.

Through his works, Achebe expresses a powerful cry for an end to worldwide oppression. In an autobiographical comment published in Contemporary Novelists, he described himself as “a political writer.” He explained that his politics are “concerned with universal human communication across racial and cultural boundaries as a means of fostering respect

At a Glance…

Name pronounced “Chin-ew-ah A-chay-bay”; born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, November 16, 1930, in Ogidi, Nigeria; son of Isaiah Okafo (a Church Missionary Society teacher) and Janet N. (Iloegbunam) Achebe; married Christiana Chinwe Okoli, 1961; children: two daughters (Chinelo and Nwando) and two sons (Ikechukwu and Chidi). Education: Attended Government College, Umuahia, 1944-47; University College, Ibadan, B.A., 1953.

Worked for Nigerian Broadcasting Corp. as talks producer, 1954-57, controller, 1958-61, and director, Voice of Nigeria, 1961-66; cofounder, Citadel Press, Enugu, 1967; University of Nigeria, Nsukka, senior research fellow, 1967-73, professor of English, 1973-81, professor emeritus, 1984—; director, Nwamife Publishers Ltd., Enugu, and Heinemann Educational Books (Nigeria) Ltd., Ibadan, both beginning 1972; University of Massachusetts, Amherst, visiting professor, 1972-75, Fulbright professor, 1987-88. Visiting professor at colleges and universities in the U.S., including Bard College.

Selected awards: Margaret Wrong Memorial Prize, 1959; Rockefeller and UNESCO fellowships, 1963; Jock Campbell/New Statesman Award, 1965; Commonwealth Poetry Prize, 1972; Nigerian National Merit Award, 1979; named to Order of the Federal Republic (Nigeria), 1979; Booker Prize nomination, 1987; numerous honorary degrees.

Member: Association of Nigerian Authors; Commonwealth Arts Organization, London; Modern Language Association of America (honorary fellow); American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; Writers and Scholars International.

Addresses: P.O. Box 53, Nsukka, Nigeria; or c/o Department of Language and Literature, Bard College, Annandale on-Hudson, NY 12504.

for all people.” Throughout his life and in his writings, Achebe has attempted to keep pace with and respond to the particular demands of three major periods in recent African history: these include the era of the colonial years, into which Achebe was born; the years of nationalist protest, when Achebe grew up; and the succeeding years of resumed independence as modern Africa.

Nationalist Response to Colonial Rule

Achebe’s international reputation was firmly established with his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), which has been translated into 45 languages, has sold over 8 million copies, and has been adapted for the stage, screen, and television. In Hopes and Impediments, his 1988 book of essays, Achebe remembered the writing of this novel as “an act of atonement with my past, the ritual return and homage of a prodigal son.” Through Things Fall Apart, the author renounces the negative view of Africa and Africans that he had unconsciously accepted during his upbringing in the British colonial era. In its rejection of the European denial of African culture and humanity, the novel forms a part of what Achebe terms a “mental revolution,” which accompanied the nationalist movement in British West Africa and led to eventual independence.

Writing to Preserve Tradition

Born November 16, 1930, Chinua Achebe was raised in what was then the Colony of Nigeria under British rule. His father, Isaiah Okafo Achebe, had been one of his village’s earliest converts to Christianity and taught the young Achebe to scorn those who held onto the traditional religion of the Igbo people. (However, Chinua Achebe did have an uncle who was not Christian.) Achebe felt drawn to the ways of his non-Christian neighbors and attended traditional village festivals despite prohibitions from his father and mother. At the colonial government secondary school, he studied the works of Charles Dickens, Jonathan Swift, and William Shakespeare, as well as a number of “African” books such as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. While he enjoyed these works early in high school, by the time he graduated in 1947 Achebe realized that he was forsaking his African roots by identifying with the white man—not the African, who was portrayed in such literature as a savage. Achebe was thus inspired to destroy such erroneous characterizations of Africa and Africans by writing his own fiction.

Achebe decided to become a writer while attending the University College in Ibadan. Although he entered the university to study medicine, he soon shifted to the liberal arts, an area of greater interest to him. While a student there, Achebe came across the 1939 novel Mister Johnson, by British writer Joyce Cary, and was particularly disturbed by the book’s entirely superficial and grossly inaccurate depiction of Nigeria. His exasperation at that novel convinced him to try his hand at writing.

As an undergraduate, Achebe wrote short stories about Nigeria and published a number of them in the campus newspaper, the University Herald. He then began work as a journalist for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1954, one year after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in literature. It was at this time that Achebe first imagined the character Okonkwo, who would become the tragic hero of Things Fall Apa rt, which was published four years later. In an interview with Patrick Samway for America, Achebe described his understanding of Okonkwo: “Things Fall Apart needed a main character who saw things in terms of either/or and thought he was a defender of his own culture. And he was. The only problem is that the world was more complex than Okonkwo understood. Of course, this is the substance of tragedy.”

Independence, Disenchantment

In his 1966 novel A Man of the People, published only six years after Nigeria’s independence from British rule, Achebe turned his piercing vision to the cynical failures of Nigerian democratic politics. The author’s autobiographical note in Contemporary Novelists describes the quick passing from one era in Nigerian history to the next and the corresponding shift of emphasis in Nigerian novels:“Europe conceded independence to us and we promptly began to misuse it, or rather those leaders to whom we entrusted the wielding of our new power and opportunity [misused it]. So we got mad at them and came out brandishing novels of disenchantment.”

A Man of the People was Achebe’s quintessential novel of disenchantment. World Press Review reprinted Chuks Iloegbunam’s summary of the novel: “In A Man of the People, Achebe focuses on the mess that African politicians made of nationhood once political authority devolved on them. Abuse of power, corruption, political thuggery, and electoral malpractices walked the streets in broad daylight.” Achebe’s vision in the novel proved altogether too accurate. Days after the book was published in 1966, a coup d’etat ended Nigeria’s first republic and thrust the nation into a chaos that would lead to a massacre of nearly 30,000 Igbo people and finally to all-out civil war. Achebe had predicted in his novel the fall of civilian government and the introduction of military coups and chaos.

While A Man of the People, Achebe’s fourth novel, marks the height of the author’s early disillusionment, his second and third novels also reflect a fall from innocence. No Longer at Ease, published in 1960, registers the confusion and immediate failure of idealism that came with Nigerian independence. The main character of the book, a fictional political leader, is at first hopeful and idealistic; he then falls through a crisis of cultural confusion into bribery and corruption. The government remains, however, and the corrupt politician is charged and imprisoned for his crimes.

In his third novel, Arrow of God (1964), Achebe returns to an earlier theme—/the response of Africans to their initial colonization by Europeans. This time the tragic hero, Ezeulu, is a traditional priest who still ultimately loses his power, but differs significantly from Okonkwo in his approach to the Europeans. Achebe explained in the America interview that “Ezeulu… is ready to listen to the other side…, provided his dignity is not insulted.” Ezeulu also sends his son to learn the ways of the white man; while this move ultimately serves only to quicken his own downfall, the possibility remains that the son may yet throw off the white man’s domination. Two years later when Nigerian civil order collapsed, A Man of the People would demonstrate eery foresight.

Civil War in Nigeria

By the time of the outbreak of the civil war, Achebe had become established as one of Nigeria’s leading novelists; but the war drove him away from writing long fiction for over two decades. His disillusionment had grown complete, and in the context of the atrocities of his nation’s struggle, the novel seemed to him an inappropriate form of expression. In Contemporary Novelists, Achebe remembered his disillusionment and frustration: Europe had only made a tactical withdrawal on the political front and while we sang our anthem and unfurled our flag she was securing her iron grip behind us in the economic field. And our leaders in whose faces we hurled our disenchantment neither saw nor heard because they were not leaders at all but marionettes.”

Achebe could not avoid involvement with the chaotic events of the time and chose to throw himself into the cause of his Igbo people. On January 15, 1966, about two years before the civil war broke out, a group of mainly Igbo army officers from southeastern Nigeria staged a successful coup that ended civilian rule in Nigeria. By July of that year, army officers from the Muslim northern region had staged a successful countercoup, toppling the Igbo-dominated government and ignoring the subsequent massacre of up to 30,000 Igbo people living in the North. After the countercoup, Achebe sent his family back to the southeastern region of Nigeria, a more predominant Igbo area. He then went into hiding and joined his family in the East in September.

In the spring of 1967, the Igbos declared the eastern region—now known as the Republic of Biafra—an independent state, thereby seceding from the central government. Achebe was in the new capital, Enugu, at the time, starting up the Citadel Press with fellow Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo (who was later killed in the war). After Enugu fell to federal troops in October of 1967, Achebe traveled to foreign capitals to publicize the plight of Biafran peoples, which included mass starvation as well as widespread casualties from the massacre and war. He worked through the duration of the war as Biafran Minister of Information.

Achebe’s preoccupation with the horrors of the Nigerian civil war made it difficult for him to write long fiction in the late 1960s. Instead of working on novels, he wrote poetry, short stories, children’s fiction, essays, and articles. In the volume Christmas in Biafra, which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972, Achebe expressed his fierce anger, despair, and sorrow at the forces that were tearing his nation apart.

Peace Brings Cautious Hope for Change

Biafra fell to the Nigerian federal government in January of 1970. Achebe continued his efforts in publishing by assuming the position of director of both Nwamife Publishers Ltd., based in Enugu, Nigeria, and Heinemann Educational Books (Nigeria) Ltd., based in Ibadan. He had begun his work in publishing in 1962 as general editor of the Heinemann “African Writers Series,” and he viewed his new directorial positions in publishing as a vehicle for combatting racism in literature and fostering the efforts of African writers. Achebe also began teaching, notably during the 1970s at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka and overseas at the universities of Massachusetts and Connecticut. He delivered numerous addresses and wrote critical essays on racism in Africa, the aftereffects of colonialism on his people, and the need for more young voices in African literature. As James Curry, the editor in charge of the “African Writers Series” after Achebe left the role in 1972, put it, “Chinua Achebe, more than anyone else, reshaped the literary map of Africa.”

During the 1980s and early ’90s, Achebe focused on his teaching and lecturing while writing general essays, literary criticism, and a fifth novel, Anthills of the Savannah, which many critics found to be his most powerful novel to date. Unlike his other novels, in Anthills of the Savannah women take the most significant role by inventing a new kind of storytelling—and thereby offering the glimmer of hope in the novel’s ambiguous ending. This marks a tremendous change in tone from Achebe’s earlier works, especially Things Fall Apart. In a 1990 interview for the Utne Reader, Achebe concluded, “Anger is a useless emotion,” thereby offering insight into his assumption over the years of a view of cautious optimism.

Chinua Achebe has worked variously as a journalist, publisher, teacher, and writer and has focused at different times on different literary genres, but he has continued throughout his life to work tirelessly in the service of his ideals. He told Patrick Samway in the America interview that he is working on a new novel and plans to write his autobiography.

Selected writings

Fiction—long and short

Things Fall Apart, Heinemann, 1958.

No Longer at Ease, Heinemann, 1960.

The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories, Etudo, 1962.

Arrow of God, Heinemann, 1964.

A Man of the People, Heinemann, 1966.

Girls at War (short stories), Heinemann, 1972.

Anthills of the Savannah, Heinemann, 1987.

Nonfiction

Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays, Doubleday, 1975.

In Person: Achebe, Awoonor, and Soyinka at the University of Washington, University of Washington African Studies Program, 1975.

The Trouble with Nigeria, Fourth Dimension, 1983.

The World of the Ogbanje, Fourth Dimension, 1986.

Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays 1965-1987, Heinemann, 1988.

“An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” published in the authoritative Norton Critical Edition of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, 1988.

The University and the Leadership Factor in Nigerian Politics, ABIC, 1988.

A Tribute to James Baldwin, University of Massachusetts Press, 1989.

Beyond Hunger in Africa, Currey, 1991.

Poetry

Beware, Soul-Brother and Other Poems, Nwankwo-Ifejika, 1971, revised edition published as Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems, Doubleday, 1973.

Children’s fiction

Chike and the River, Cambridge University Press, 1966. (With John Iroaganachi) How the Leopard Got His Claws, Nwamife, 1972.

The Flute, Fourth Dimension, 1977.

The Drum, Fourth Dimension, 1977.

Editor

The Insider: Stories of War and Peace from Nigeria, Nwankwo-Ifejika, 1971.

(With Jomo Kenyatta and Amos Tutuola) Winds of Change: Modern Stories from Black Africa, Longman, 1977.

(With Dubem Okafor) Don’t Let Him Die: An Anthology of Memorial Poems for Christopher Okigbo, Fourth Dimension, 1978.

(With C. L. Innes), African Short Stories, Heinemann, 1985.

Also editor of “African Writers Series,” Heinemann, 1962-72; founding editor, Okike: A Nigerian Journal of New Writing, 1971.

Other

Chair/publisher, African Commentary Magazine.

Sources

Books

Achebe, Chinua, Anthills of the Savannah, Anchor Press, 1987.

Achebe, Chinua, Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems, Anchor Books, 1973.

Achebe, Chinua, Hopes and Impediments, Doubleday, 1988.

Black Literature Criticism, Gale, 1992.

Black Writers, Gale, 1989.

Contemporary Novelists, St. James Press, 1991.

Duerden, Dennis, and Cosmo Pieterse, editors, African Writers Talking: A Collection of Radio Interviews, Africana Publishing, 1972.

Killam, G. D., The Novels of Chinua Achebe, Africana Publishing, 1969.

King, Bruce, Introduction to Nigerian Literature, Africana Publishing, 1972.

Larson, Charles R., The Emergence of African Fiction, Indiana University Press, 1972.

Petersen, Kirsten Holst, and Anna Rutherford, editors, Chinua Achebe: A Celebration, Heinemann, 1991.

Periodicals

America, June 29, 1991, pp. 684-86.

Callaloo, Winter 1990, pp. 87-101.

Modern Fiction Studies, Autumn 1991, pp. 493-507.

Studies in Black Literature: Special Issue—Chinua Achebe, Spring 1971.

Utne Reader, March/April 1990, p. 36.

World Press Review, June 1986, reprinted from Newswatch of Lagos, Nigeria.

—Nicholas S. Patti