Page 3 - BPW BERKELEY BULLETIN - Edition 22 - February 2024 - with attachments

1. Chinua Achebe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinua_Achebe

It’s impossible to talk about African literature without mentioning Chinua Achebe. His two best-known books,
Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease, have left a lasting mark on literature from the continent.

Achebe’s work is a long reflection on colonialism and its consequences for individuality and the identity of Africans
who are torn between two worlds — traditional and Western society — that they can’t fully belong to. He is one of
the most famous African writers, and many expected him to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature. Unfortunately, he
didn’t receive the award before his death in 2013.

What to Read by Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart

Perhaps the best-known African novel in the English-speaking world, Things Fall Apart tells the story of pre-
colonial life in a village in southern Nigeria and the cultural shock that came with the arrival of the British at the end
of the 19th century. This novel is fascinating in many ways: in the glimpse he provides into a past and
unrecognizable world and culture; in what he recounts and depicts; in the universalism of the remarks and the
reflection on upheavals that communities can be confronted with. Achebe does all this without falling into the
nostalgia of the past or blindly promoting the merits of progress.