Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart is the most widely read novel in Africa. Written by Nigerian national, Chinua Achebe, it details tribal life of a small village both before and during colonization. We see the world through the eyes of yam farmer, warrior and wrestling legend, Okonkwo, a short-tempered, perfectionist with little sympathy for his drunkard father or his sensitive son. Okonkwo is by current-day descriptions, a brute, but he is prosperous and well-respected in his village. He lives a happy life for many years before things begin to fall apart - first within his life in the village and later for the village as a whole as white missionaries and the colonialist government that follows change village cultural ways forever.

Prior to the arrival of the white colonialists, Okonkwo accidentally kills a man during a sacred ritual and is forced out of his village for seven years. He and his three wives and children find refuge in the village of his mother and receive little news from his home village. When he returns, he sees that his people have learned to live peacefully, if not happily, with white (and black) newcomers even to the degree of tolerating a new missionary church and its rituals. But Okonkwo is not adept at negotiating this sort of change. He thinks of his fellow-tribesmen as "soft women" for not fighting the white men. Conflicts arise and tragedy ensues.

Sound like a typical Greek Tragedy? It is. Likewise, it is a classic tale of conflicting cultures.The book is written straight-up and we learn many of the intricacies of life in the Lgbo tribe: the day-to-day events, rites, cultural values and taboos. Achebe writes of a life that existed in the 1890s - around the time his father was growing up. Achebe himself converted to Christianity as a young man and so he sees both sides with a clarity that would be hard to reproduce by a younger writer. The book is chock-full of short folk tales, adages and explanations for the natural world. Here is an example:

When the moon rose late in the night, people said it was refusing food, as a sullen husband refuses his wife's food when they have quarreled.

The matter-of-fact writing prevents it from being a page-turning read, but it's a book one is glad to have read.