Chinua Achebe

One of the foremost African writers of the twentieth century, Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born in Nneobi, Nigeria on November 16, 1930. His parents were converts from their native religion to the Protestant Church Mission Society, and Achebe and his siblings were raised with a fusion of Christianity and their traditional culture. For instance, Achebe's childhood included the colorful pageants and rich storytelling tradition, as well as Western influence in the form of school, where he learned the catechism and was required to speak only English.

It was this double influence of his native culture and their English colonisers that later generated many of Achebe's writings. Achebe was a brilliant and dedicated student from a young age, and made it into Nigeria's first university (opened in 1948) with very high scores on his entrance exam. Achebe found his talents as a writer while studying in the English department, where he began writing short stories that reflected his thoughts on the entrance of Christianity and modern Western culture into his traditional Nigeria. What frustrated him further was the presentation of Africans in European literature, which gave a sense of European superiority over rather unintelligent savages. Achebe began working very hard at developing his writing style, as well as setting the stage for the Nigerian novel. One notable quality of his writing is that he insisted on writing in English, feeling it important to write in the language of Nigeria's colonisers.While training in London for work at the BBC, Achebe shared the manuscript of his first novel with an English novelist, who gave him very positive feedback. He kept working, and finally published Things Fall Apart in 1958, which met with admiration from British readers and has become one of the most important books in African literature.

Still living in Nigeria, Achebe continued his writing, dedicating his second novel to a woman named Christie Okoli whom he married in 1962. Now a well-known figure, Achebe turned attention to establishing African literature and raising awareness in Europe and the United States for the Civil War in Nigeria (brought about by the succession of the southern region of Biafra). In his experience with the Western world during the 1960s, he also became a voice against racism and the inaccurate perception of African culture. This was more fully developed while Achebe and his family were living in Massachusetts, where Achebe was teaching at Amherst. He developed specifically a famous critique against the English novelist Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness. Achebe's views have been challenging to the West's conception of Africans and of racism.

Chinua Achebe is currently a professor at Brown University, at the age of eighty. He and his wife have four children and five grandchildren.

Writings of Chinua Achebe:

Novels: Things Fall Apart (1958); No Longer At Ease (1960); Arrow of God (1964); A Man of the People (1966); Anthills of the Savannah (1987)
Short Stories: "Marriage is a Private Affair" (1952); "Dead Men's Path" (1953); The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories (1953); "Civil Peace" (1971); Girls at War and Other Stories (1973)
Poetry: Beware, Soul Brother, and other poems (1971); Don't let him die (editor, 1978); Another Africa (1998); Collected poems (2005); Refugee Mother and Child; Vultures
Essays and Criticism: The Novelist as a Teacher (1965); An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1975); "The Igbo and their Perception of God, Human Beings and Creation" (forthcoming, 2010)
Chilren's works: Chike and the River (1966); How the Leopard Got His Claws (1972)