As a person who lives their life as a normal citizen and participant of the world (rather than spending their life under a rock), you've most likely heard of the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. You've probably also heard that it is a highly acclaimed African classic, and maybe that was enough for you to dump it in the list of notable books you should read sometime soon that's piling up in your head. Let's refresh our memories.
The book looks something like this:
Series: The African Trilogy #1
Publication Date: September 1, 1994
Genre: African Classic
Page Count: 209
THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society.The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries. These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within.
Oh yeah right, that one!
