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Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
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Things Fall Apart (original 1958; edition 1994)

by Chinua Achebe (Author)

Series: African Trilogy (1)

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20,545431210 (3.76)5 / 1047
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.… (more)
Member:manda-jane
Title:Things Fall Apart
Authors:Chinua Achebe (Author)
Info:Anchor (1994), 209 pages
Collections:Your library, Currently reading
Rating:
Tags:Reading, 1001 books

Work Information

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)

  1. 245
    Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (SanctiSpiritus)
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    Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (mrstreme)
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    The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (jlelliott, bbudke)
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    Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (Osbaldistone)
  5. 51
    Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (Rubbah)
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    The Lion and the Jewel by Wole Soyinka (libron)
    libron: Similar themes
  7. 54
    The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (Ellen_Elizabeth)
    Ellen_Elizabeth: Another classic, historical fiction novel that explores traditional culture through the story and of one man and his family. Both were written in English and illustrate the author's perceived strengths and weaknesses of the subject culture in a way that is accessible to western readers.… (more)
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    TuesdayNovember: Both follow the fall of a callous man - one great, one not quite so.
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» See also 1047 mentions

English (408)  Spanish (6)  Swedish (3)  Italian (2)  German (2)  French (2)  Norwegian (1)  Catalan (1)  Finnish (1)  Danish (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (428)
Showing 1-5 of 408 (next | show all)
Although the main theme of this novel is the colonialization of Africa by Great Britain in the late 19th century, it also exposes the folly of hubris, particularly of its protagonist, Okonkwo. The first part of the story centers on Okonkwo's life in his agriculture-centric society, Umuofia, and its kinship ties, superstitions, and rituals. Okonkwo has some reason to be proud: he pulled himself up by the bootstraps, so to speak, not having the same advantages as his Igbo clansmen because his father was considered lazy and contemptible, and he suffered an outcast's death. Okonkwo fear of failure haunts him throughout, and he becomes hard man with an inflexible will and a fiery temper that he blames on his personal god because of the shame his father brought to the family. Although he achieves great success in his fatherland, Okonkwo is ultimately banished for seven years and seeks shelter in his motherland, Mbanta, where he again prospers but still longs to return to his fatherland. Upon his return to Umuofia, he finds much has changed, largely as the result of the British missionaries and administrators who are trying to "civilize" the non-Christians. Achebe explores the impact of colonialism on different aspects of village life and the different categories of villagers. It was refreshing to see colonialism portrayed through the eyes of the colonized, not of the colonizers, as in Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. To be, the real reason things fell apart was a failure of communication between the Western interlopers and the natives. ( )
  bschweiger | Feb 4, 2024 |
An engaging story about an African man, his family and tribe. Achebe depicts the brutality of the animistic, pagan patriarchal, honour-shame culture before colonisation. When the colonisers arrive they bring their own form of brutalitiy coloaked beneath British law and order:

It is a story of contrasts: strong vs weak, masculine vs feminine, fortune vs failure, pagan animism vs Christianity, African tribal culture vs Western colonisation.

Achebe depicts the first missionary to the tribe in contradistiction to the colonisers. The Christianity that arrives is bold yet gentle, confident yet wiling to suffer. In contrast to the darkness of pagan animism, the missionaries bring freedom from the fear of evils spirits, curses and capricious gods. They welcome outcasts and adopt twin babies who have been left to die in the jungle. They speak of a Father God full of love in a culture where fathers were harsh and unyielding. The missionaries weren’t perfect (especially the second who arrives later in Achebe’s story), but Achebe makes the point that the Christianity the missionaries brought enriched the lives of the Africans.

The final sentance in the novel reveals what Achebe thinks his work is about:

"The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner should never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from a tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger."

I found this review helpful: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/830031498 ( )
1 vote toby.neal | Jan 9, 2024 |
Things Fall Apart is fascinating as it depicts what it felt like living in a clan in the SE part of Nigeria on the cusp of British colonization during the late 19th century. Written from the point of view of of someone living then and there, it personalizes that part of the world in a way I hadn't before experienced in literature.
The plot follows the story of Okonkwo, a man who worked to rescue his family name from his father’s disgraceful failure, becomes successful in his Igbo Chinua Achebe details the clan’s parameters of rules, etiquette, beliefs and hierarchies and shows via internal monologues the difficulty of questioning the rules and going against the flow.
Okonkwo holds fast to his deeply held machismo ideal and derides any man who acts womanish, a trait he sees in his own son. He prides himself on his successes, and plans to become a great leader but he himself breaks a rule that changes the course of his life. Eventually the clan – who had never seen or dealt with white people – are confronted with the influx of Christian missionaries and British political envoys. The intercultural clash brought in by the colonists is psychologically and physically brutal.
( )
  dcvance | Dec 21, 2023 |
Katie lent this book to a friend at GMU 12/2023
  KellyObrien | Dec 18, 2023 |
The ending paragraph is absolutely incredible and sort of reflects on how the book treats colonialism. Like, treating this as fiction you have a normal story for 70% of it and then suddenly English people arrive and the story completely changes. Okonkwo stops being an active subject and becomes an acted-upon object. It's someone else's story now, one he is not allowed to understand. The final paragraph says this very explicitly, becoming a (small) part of the district commissioner's book. It's a clever metafictional device that provides a different way of looking at the impact of colonialism on the human psyche, by sort of changing the rules for the reader. There's a running theme of stories and using them to understand our lives - there are quite a lot of folktale type stories mentioned.

Before that point the story is of Okonkwo - he's hardly a sympathetic character, being abusive to his wives and children and seeing violence and physical strength as the answer to everything, but it's also clearly shown how it comes from struggling to place himself in a society where he understands the rules but striving to be the best at them means suppressing parts of himself. He can only understand life in terms of becoming the most recognised in his village/clan without ever softening. The depiction of life in the village is strong and evocative.

"Don't you see the pot is full of yams?" Ekwefi asked. "And you know how leaves become smaller after cooking."

"Yes," said Ezinma, "that was why the snake-lizard killed his mother."

"Very true," said Ekwefi.

"He gave his mother seven baskets of vegetables to cook and in the end there were only three. And so he killed her," said Ezinma.

"That is not the end of the story."

"Oho," said Ezinma. "I remember now. He brought another seven baskets and cooked them himself. And there were again only three. So he killed himself too."
( )
  tombomp | Oct 31, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 408 (next | show all)

Set in the late 19th century, at the height of the "Scramble" for African territories by the great European powers, Things Fall Apart tells the story of Okonkwo, a proud and highly respected Igbo from Umuofia, somewhere near the Lower Niger. Okonkwo's clan are farmers, their complex society a patriarchal, democratic one. Achebe suggests that village life has not changed substantially in generations.

The first part of a trilogy, Things Fall Apart was one of the first African novels to gain worldwide recognition: half a century on, it remains one of the great novels about the colonial era.
 
[Achebe] describes the many idyllic features of pre-Christian native life with poetry and humor. But his real achievement is his ability to see the strengths and weaknesses of his characters with a true novelist's compassion.
 

» Add other authors (62 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Achebe, Chinuaprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Appiah, Kwame AnthonyIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bandele, BiyiIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dicker, JaapTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dicker, JanTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
James, Peter FrancisNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Okeke, UcheIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Puigtobella, BernatTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Rodriguez, EdelCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Serraillier, IanIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vertaalgroep Administratief Centrum BergeykTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Werk, Jan Kees van deAfterwordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

—W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"
Dedication
First words
Okonkwo was well-known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat.
Quotations
The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
There is no story that is not true.
The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
If I hold her hand she says, Don't Touch!. If I hold her foot she says Don't Touch! But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.
A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.
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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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Book description
More than two million copies of Things Fall Apart have been sold in the United States since it was first published here in 1959. Worldwide, there are eight million copies in print in fifty different languages. This is Chinua Achebe's masterpiece and it is often compared to the great Greek tragedies, and currently sells more than one hundred thousand copies a year in the United States.
A simple story of a "strong man" whose life is dominated by fear and anger, Things Fall Apart is written with remarkable economy and subtle irony. Uniquely and richly African, at the same time it reveals Achebe's keen awareness of the human qualities common to men of all times and places.
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Penguin Australia

2 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.

Editions: 0141023384, 0141186887

 

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