THINGS FALL APART

About the Author

 

            Albert Chinualumogu Acheb or Chinua Achebe, was one of the most important African writers of his time. He was also considered to be one of the most original literary artists that wrote in English. Chinua Achebe was born on November 16, 1930 in Ogidi, Nigeria. His parents were Christian but heavily enforced traditional Ibo values. He attended Government College in Umuahia in 1944 and University College in Ibadan in 1948. He received his Bachelor of Arts from London University in 1953. He studied broadcasting, and later on became the director of an External Broadcasting for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service. He was married and had four children.

           

            Achebe co-founded a publishing company with Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo and later became the editor of a Nigerian Magazine. He founded Iwa ndi Ibo in 1984, a bilingual publication dedicated to Igbo cultural life.

 

            Written in 1958, Things Fall Apart was his first published novel. Although the majority of it was in English, he always attempted to incorporate Igbo language into his writing.

 

             In 1985, Chinua Achebe became a Professor at the University of Nigeria. After moving to the United States, he taught at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut. He held a teaching position at Bard College until 2009 when he joined Brown University as a professor of Africans Studies. He received over twenty honorary recognitions from universities around the world including the Nigerian National Merit Award, in 1987.

 

              In 1990 he was involved in a car accident in Nigeria that left him paralyzed from the waist down.  Chinua Achebe died on March 21, 2013 at the age of 82 in Boston, Massachusetts.