The Word, The World and the Writers - Chinua Achebe - Part 1

Looking back at my association with the Nigerian writers, I can easily relate with three of them. One is Chinua Achebe who like Rabindranath Tagore was fascinated by the Irish poet – W.B Yeats to name his first book in his African trilogy as ‘Things Fall Apart’. The story of Okonkwo is one of the ‘BBC’s 100 novels that shaped our world’. I doubt whether Man, whether he is Indian, African or Pakistani is free from the literary shackles of the West. Things Fall Apart is a regular academic entry in the syllabi of universities and schools around the world. I ‘studied’ (never read wholeheartedly) the novel for my master’s programme. I am sure that I read the novel for my internal /semester exam but not for any aesthetic or for the sheer pleasure of reading a novel. Most of the time a novel is introduced as a sample of world literature. The instructor never encourages the students to look beyond the text. Meanwhile, the students are worried only about the exams the results. They are quite contented with some study guides and mediocre summaries. Realization happens at a later stage especially if you are a book lover beyond your studies, that Things Fall Apart is part of African trilogy which includes two other works – No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God. According to Achebe, his two other novels, ‘A Man of the People’ and the ‘Anthills of the Savannah’ are spiritual successors to the trilogy.

As part of my intention to delve deeper into the world and personality of Chinua Achebe, I read the interview with the author which appeared in ‘The Paris Review’. The blog contains some interesting ideas and quotes from the interview. The interview was recorded in two sessions in two different locations – one at 92 Street Y and at the author’s home in Upstate New York. The author was wearing the traditional Nigerian clothes. He was in a wheelchair after the car accident which happened in Lagos. He shared his memories about his love for short storied which was there right from his childhood days. He greatly enjoyed the stories told to him, by his mother and his elder sister. Even at school he loved the stories that he read. His parents were evangelists and for 35 years they travelled to different parts of the Igboland to spread the gospel. What he liked in the stories that he read at school was the remoteness of the stories and how ethereal they were. As he became older, he read stories about savages and Whiteman. He always took the side of the Whiteman because for him they were fine, excellent and intelligent. The savages were stupid and ugly. Reading these stories made him realize the danger of not having your own stories. He quotes the great proverb to drive home the point ‘Until the Lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter’. For him, being a writer is almost like being a historian.