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Chinua
Achebe began writing after an aborted career in politics because he had
a burning desire to change the world. Two years later, his first novel, Things
Fall Apart, set in his Nigerian homeland, did just that.
Seventysix-year-old Achebe was awarded the `A360,000 Man Booker International Prize last week after being credited with delivering the definitive modern African novel. Academics have hailed the publication of Things Fall Apart in 1958 as a watershed moment that is now influencing a younger generation of African writers and it regularly features on school and university syllabuses around the world. Among those who cite him as an inspiration is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian novelist who won the Orange Prize for Fiction recently for Half A Yellow Sun. Professor Elaine
Showalter, a judge for the Man Booker International Prize, which
recognises a living author for an entire body of work, said Things
Fall Apart and Achebe's subsequent works, "inaugurated the
modern African novel". Achebe was selected from a shortlist of the most respected names in international literature, including Margaret Attwood, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie and John Banville. Speaking to The Independent, he said the novel was inspired by his anger over the misrepresentation of Africans and the desire for change. "I knew I had a story because it was all around me," he said. "I had heard people's stories of Africa from a western perspective but the Africans did not have their stories. Africa was not absent but somehow it had been made to seem so. "At the age of 26 or 27 when I began scribbling in my village, I saw all the people around me were so eloquent and these were people who were not supposed to be able to express themselves, according to African representation in books and movies, people without language. I knew there was something fishy going on and it motivated me to write." A historical novel, which considered the effects of colonialisation on the traditional Igbo society, Things Fall Apart has sold more than 10 million copies around the world and been translated into 50 languages. Achebe also became known for his outspoken critique of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which he claimed grossly misrepresented Africans. "The first time I read Conrad I didn't catch the racism," he said. "I knew there were a lot of people jumping up and down on the waterfront and making faces and being totally unattractive, but it was only on re-reading it many times that I became angry. "Why would someone deliberately distort the humanity of another. This realisation was all part of opening my eyes that led to me becoming an author and discovering more reasons about why I should be one." Achebe believes that "things have changed for Africa" and that there are far more authors documenting experiences from a non-western perspective. There is also an academic consensus that his work heralded the path for younger African novelists to write. Orange Prize winner Adichie said: "He is a remarkable man. He is what I think writers should be."
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