Things Fall Apart

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / Classic / Achebe, Chinua, Fiction / Achebe, Chinua
On Shelf At: Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Classic / Achebe, Chinua	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Classic / Achebe, Chinua	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Achebe, Chinua	4-week checkout	Due 05-22-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Classic / Achebe, Chinua	4-week checkout	Due 05-19-2024

First published in 1958, this novel tells the story of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community who is banished for accidentally killing a clansman. The novel covers the seven years of his exile to his return, providing an inside view of the intrusion of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society in the 1890s.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Greatest African Author submitted by fka83111 on June 29, 2011, 7:43pm Absolute must-read book. Rich in African culture and proverbs.

Awful submitted by cwb5463 on June 29, 2016, 8:19pm Very meaningless in the basics. Confusing with an "all over the place plot"

Pretty Good submitted by Stinglikeawalrus on July 30, 2019, 2:30pm A real tour de force; but a plain tale simply told. Achebe illustrates and explains rather than judges and provides a moving and very human story of change and disintegration.

Difficult But Very Important Read submitted by Meginator on July 4, 2022, 8:49am Content Note: This book mentions incidents of misogyny, domestic violence, child murder, animal death, and suicide.

This book is a classic for good reason, as Chinua Achebe portrays precolonial Nigerian life with a depth that is rarely afforded to these people and societies by Western writers. He deftly juggles the story of Okonkwo, one of the richer and more influential men in his clan, with a description of the clan’s daily life and social customs and, later in the book, with the conflict brought by Christian missionaries as they expand into the clan’s traditional territory and completely upend their ways of life (to put it mildly). Okonkwo is a thoroughly crafted character with a rich interior life through which readers become aware of the clan’s values and traditions; the book’s balance of character development and historical exposition is aided by a consistent omniscient narrative voice that provides insight into other points of view without ever straying too far from Okonkwo’s own life and point of view. The story is both personal and societal in that respect, and the book benefits from these complementary perspectives.

Although many of the clan’s customs are built on rampant (and often violent) misogyny that can be difficult to stomach, they are still easily the more sympathetic culture after white Christian missionaries and government officials come in and begin to destroy everything that the Igbo people believe and hold dear. Everything comes to a head in the novel’s final paragraphs, which mark a radical departure from the rest of the book and brilliantly encapsulate the Western perspective on African colonization. Despite its occasionally difficult subject matter, this book is an important work for white, Western readers who are not generally exposed to the stories of the people and places that have been brutalized and destroyed by the violent advance of European culture around the globe. This book will change your perspective.