Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart in 1958, partly in response to what he considered the racist depiction of Africa in novels like Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. He wanted to tell an African story from the inside — not as exotic backdrop for European self-examination, but as a civilization with its own complexity, beauty, contradictions, and dignity. He succeeded so completely that the novel has become the most widely read work of African literature in history.

Okonkwo is a self-made man in the Igbo village of Umuofia, in what is now southeastern Nigeria. He has risen from nothing through sheer force of will, terrified of resembling his gentle, indebted father. He is a wrestler, a warrior, a farmer of yams. He is also rigid, violent, and incapable of showing tenderness without perceiving it as weakness. He is, in other words, a profoundly human creation — admirable and infuriating in equal measure.

The novel's first two-thirds paint a rich, detailed portrait of pre-colonial Igbo life: its rituals, its justice system, its humor, its spiritual beliefs, its internal debates. Then the missionaries arrive, and the world Achebe has so carefully built begins to crack. The genius of the novel is that the fall is not simple. Christianity offers genuine appeal to the marginalized members of Igbo society. Colonialism does not merely destroy — it exploits real fissures. Things fall apart not only because of external force, but because no civilization is monolithic.

Things Fall Apart earns its place because it changed who gets to tell the story. Before Achebe, the dominant literary narrative of Africa was written by Europeans — Conrad, Cary, Haggard — and Africa existed in those works primarily as a symbol of darkness, mystery, or primitivism. Achebe demolished that tradition by writing a novel that portrays African society with the same fullness and nuance that European novelists reserved for their own cultures.

The novel's influence has been seismic. It opened the door for an entire generation of African and postcolonial writers. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and many others have cited Achebe as the writer who showed them that their stories deserved to be told on the world stage.

Beyond its cultural significance, Things Fall Apart is simply a beautifully crafted novel. Achebe's prose is spare, precise, and saturated with the rhythms of Igbo oral tradition. The proverbs that punctuate the dialogue are not decoration — they are the philosophy of an entire people, distilled into single sentences. Okonkwo's tragedy is rendered with the economy and inevitability of Greek drama.

Published in 1958, Things Fall Apart has sold over 20 million copies, been translated into more than 50 languages, and is the most widely read book in modern African literature. It is required reading in schools across Africa, Europe, and North America. Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2007 for his lifetime achievement. The novel has been adapted for stage, television, and opera. Its title, drawn from W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming," has itself become a cultural reference point. Achebe's insistence on writing in English — to reach the widest possible audience while subverting the colonial language from within — sparked a major literary debate that continues to shape African literature today.