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"Achebe, Chinua"
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Chinua Achebe's Things fall apart : 1958-2008
\"Since its publication in 1958, Chinua Achebe's Things fall apart has won global critical and popular acclaim. Offering a hitherto unlimned picture of a traditional culture, it is both a moving story of the coming of colonialism and a powerful and complex political statement on the nature of cross-cultural encounter. The novel has been immensely influential as the progenitor of a whole movement in fiction, drama, and poetry focusing on the re-evaluation of traditional cultures and postcolonial tensions. It enjoys a pre-eminent position as a foundational text of postcolonial studies. This collection, originating in a conference held in London to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the novel's first publication, opens with a fascinating, insightful, and wide-ranging interview with Achebe. The essays that following explore contemporary critical responses and the novel's historical and cultural contexts. Achebe's influence on the latest generation of Nigerian writers is discussed in essays devoted to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Another essay examines the radical feminist response to the novel in the work of the francophone Algerian writer Assia Djebar, another the illustrations accompanying early editions. Teaching strategies and reader responses to the novel cover Texas, Scotland, and Australia. One measure of the phenomenal worldwide success of Things fall apart is the fact that it has been rendered into some forty-five languages; accordingly, further contributions offer sharp analyses of the German and Polish translations of the novel. Contributors: Mick Jardine, Dorota Goluch, Waltraud Kolb, Bernth Lindfors, Russell McDougall, Malika Rebai Maamri, Michel Naumann, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Christopher E.W. Ouma, Rashna Batliwala Singh, Andrew Smith, David Whittaker\"--P. [4] of cover.
Book
An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's \Heart of Darkness\
A short story is presented.
Journal Article
Chinua Achebe: The Novelist as Critic and Editor
Chinua Achebe is widely acknowledged as a foundational figure in the development of modern African literature, particularly for his novels that explore the complexities of both pre-colonial and post-colonial African experiences. However, in addition to his fiction, Achebe’s contributions as a critic and editor have profoundly influenced literary criticism and shaped global understanding of African literature. His efforts to amplify African voices through his critical essays, his role as the founding editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series, and his editorship of the literary journal Okike have been pivotal in asserting the significance of African perspectives thereby highlighting his multifaceted impact on the literary world. While scholarly studies focus predominantly on his fiction, Achebe's critical essays and editorial work merit further scholarly attention due to their lasting influence on world literature. Employing postcolonial theory as theoretical framework and methodology, this paper integrates textual analysis, critical discourse analysis, and paratextual examination to investigate Achebe’s essays in Morning Yet on Creation Day and Hopes and Impediments, as well as his editorial interventions. Through this methodological approach, the study explores how Achebe’s work addresses the challenges encountered by African writers, interrogates the role of literature in postcolonial societies, and elucidates the potential of literature to foster cultural reclamation and social transformation.
Journal Article
Kindred spirits : Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison
\"This is the first book-length comparative study of literary giants Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Bury my bones, but keep my words: Chinua Achebe remembered
Purpose The paper aims to reconsider Chinua Achebe's legacy within current debates on literary canonisation, authorship and postcolonial responsibility, advocating for a more nuanced and collective understanding of his role in African literature. Design/methodology/approach The paper employs close readings of Achebe's fiction and essays, and uses the Igbo metaphor ugo bere n'oji (the eagle perched on the iroko tree) to frame his cultural and symbolic significance. Findings Achebe's work continues to provide moral clarity, political insight and literary innovation that illuminate ongoing postcolonial challenges, affirming his enduring relevance without marginalising other African literary voices. Research limitations/implications Reassessing Achebe's legacy encourages a more ethically grounded and collectively inclusive approach to African literary history, shaping how authorship and influence are understood in postcolonial discourse. Originality/value The paper moves beyond the simplistic “father of African literature” label to propose a culturally resonant and critically engaged re-evaluation of Achebe's legacy, emphasizing both his influence and the collaborative nature of African literary production.
Journal Article
Postcolonial mind, identities and political communication in Africa
This book is about Africa in the postcolonial trend of thinking and mutual representations of peoples of different cultures. From a literary approach and culture-based illustrations, the essay explores postcolonial ideas, realities and discourses in African letters and politics. It deals also with political perspectives and solutions relating to the causes and consequences of the connection between the African youth and terrorism and their link with migration as well as leadership.
eBook
Reading across worlds : transnational book groups and the reception of difference
\"Moving between the worlds of professional (academic) and lay readers (book groups), between metropolitan and non-metropolitan audiences, between the imagined worlds of fiction and the real worlds of reading, and between the locations of England, Scotland, Canada, the Caribbean, India and Africa, Reading Across Worlds draws otherwise distant readerships into conversation. Combining sustained empirical analysis of reading group conversations with four case studies of classic and contemporary novels: Things Fall Apart, White Teeth, Brick Lane and Small Island, the book pursues what can be gained through a comparative approach to reading and readerships. This is a book about how readers beyond the academy talk about, use and make sense of a literature that publishers and bookstores, the press and professional critics, have variously labelled 'multicultural', 'international', 'diasporic', 'cosmopolitan', 'global', 'postcolonial', 'Third World', or more recently, 'World'. \"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Beyond the Single Story of African Realism: Narrative Embedding in Half of a Yellow Sun
This article seeks to contribute to critical readings of realism's mimetic claims by tracing how framed narration, or writing-about-writing, establishes reliability in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's seminal novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). Conceptions of typicality are used almost interchangeably in scholarly discussions about realism and Africanness without a critical framework that untangles the myriad links between them. To fill this lacuna, I provide a theoretical exploration of how typicality and typification, as two modes of characterization, connect fiction and reference in Adichie's novel. Focusing on the diegetic layering in Half of a Yellow Sun, I show how Africanness and realism are negotiated as two kinds of typicality that work, counterintuitively, to undercut stereotypes. Building on Adichie's now-famous concept of the \"single story,\" I use narratological terminology to think through the tension between typicality and specificity, and its particular stakes in African literature. Using this terminology, I trace how the writing of the protagonists Ugwu and Richard oscillates between fictional and referential, public and private, and oral and written representations. I thus show that realism, through framed narrations, establishes a kind of verisimilitude that is far from mimetically naïve.
Journal Article