Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor and critic. He is most famous for his 1958 book, Things Fall Apart, which follows the life and times of Okonkwo, a leader and local wrestling champion in Umuofia, a fictional village in Nigeria inhabited by the Igbo people, and his family. A phenomenal achievement, Things Fall Apart was one of the first African novels to be written in the English language and has since become the best-selling modern African novel in the world. He is widely known as the 'Father of African Literature', quite the legacy.
Achebe's career was one that received high praise and saw him travel all over the world, finally residing in Boston where he worked as a professor. Tragically Achebe was involved in a car accident that left him paralysed from the waist down for the last twenty years of his life - the fundamental reason for his relocating to the USA. His family in their statement paid tribute to "one of the great literary voices of all time. He was also a beloved husband, father, uncle and grandfather, whose wisdom and courage are an inspiration to all who knew him." Nelson Mandela has credited him with "[bringing] Africa to the World".
Chinua Achebe is one of those guys you need to look up just to furnish yourself with some brilliant quotes. Achebe just oozes profundity and is simply one of those people we all wish we were - making a real difference.
Here are a handful of quotes for you to take away:
"One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised."
"The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience."
and on Yeats (from whose poem came the title Things Fall Apart):
"But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry."
Things Fall Apart has rightly been read and taught in schools worldwide, mine included, but for some reason I remember his poem 'Vultures' much better, so am leaving you with this:
In the greyness
and drizzle of one despondent
dawn unstirred by harbingers
of sunbreak a vulture
perching high on broken
bone of a dead tree
nestled close to his
mate his smooth
bashed-in head, a pebble
on a stem rooted in
a dump of gross
feathers, inclined affectionately
to hers. Yesterday they picked
the eyes of a swollen
corpse in a water-logged
trench and ate the things in its bowel. Full
gorged they chose their roost
keeping the hollowed remnant
in easy range of cold
telescopic eyes ...
Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep - her face
turned to the wall!
...Thus the Commandant at Belsen
Camp going home for
the day with fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils will stop
at the wayside sweet-shop
and pick up a chocolate
for his tender offspring
waiting at home for Daddy's return ...
Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in every germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.
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