Biography of chinua achebe book

In , Achebe became a professor at the University of Massachusetts and, in , at the University of Connecticut. Later, he returned to Nigeria and served as the professor of English at the University of Nigeria till The novel soon shortlisted for the Booker McConnell Prize. The beginning of the s brought a tragic turn in the serenity of his life.

At the beginning of this year, an automobile accident in Nigeria made him paralyzed. This accident confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Later on, he moved to the United States and became the professor of literature at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. He remained there until Achebe won several awards during his writing career from various cultural institutions around the world.

Here is the list below:. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Home Literature. Chinua Achebe Biography by Elif Harris. His education was furthered by the collages his father hung on the walls of their home, as well as almanacs and numerous books—including a prose adaptation of Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night's Dream c.

Achebe had his secondary education at the prestigious Government College Umuahia , in Nigeria's present-day Abia State. A controversy erupted at one such session, when apostates from the new church challenged the catechist about the tenets of Christianity. In , Nigeria's first university opened in preparation for the country's independence.

Achebe was admitted as the university's first intake and given a bursary to study medicine. To compensate, the government provided a bursary, and his family donated money—his older brother Augustine gave up money for a trip home from his job as a civil servant so Achebe could continue his studies. Achebe's debut as an author was in when he wrote a piece for the University Herald , the university's magazine, [ 21 ] entitled "Polar Undergraduate".

Biography of chinua achebe book

It used irony and humour to celebrate the intellectual vigour of his classmates. After the final examinations at Ibadan in year , Achebe was awarded a second-class degree. It was a ramshackle institution with a crumbling infrastructure and a meagre library; the school was built on what the residents called "bad bush"—a section of land thought to be tainted by unfriendly spirits.

As a teacher he urged his students to read extensively and be original in their work. He taught in Oba for four months. He left the institution in and moved to Lagos to work for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service NBS , [ 33 ] a radio network started in by the colonial government. This helped him master the subtle nuances between written and spoken language, a skill that helped him later to write realistic dialogue.

Lagos made a significant impression on him. A huge conurbation , the city teemed with recent migrants from the rural villages. Achebe revelled in the social and political activity around him and began work on a novel. Also in , Achebe was selected to attend the staff training school for the BBC. In London, he met the novelist Gilbert Phelps , to whom he offered the manuscript.

Phelps responded with great enthusiasm, asking Achebe if he could show it to his editor and publishers. Achebe declined, insisting that it needed more work. He cut away the second and third sections of the book, leaving only the story of a yam farmer named Okonkwo who lives during the colonization of Nigeria and struggles with his father's debtor legacy.

He did not receive a reply from the typing service, so he asked his boss at the NBS , Angela Beattie, to visit the company during her travels to London. She did, and angrily demanded to know why the manuscript was lying ignored in the corner of the office. The company quickly sent a typed copy to Achebe. Beattie's intervention was crucial for his ability to continue as a writer.

An educational adviser, Donald MacRae, read the book and reported to the company that: "This is the best novel I have read since the war. The book was received well by the British press, and received positive reviews from critic Walter Allen and novelist Angus Wilson. Three days after publication, The Times Literary Supplement wrote that the book "genuinely succeeds in presenting tribal life from the inside".

The Observer called it "an excellent novel", and the literary magazine Time and Tide said that "Mr. Achebe's style is a model for aspirants". When Hill tried to promote the book in West Africa, he was met with scepticism and ridicule. The faculty at the University of Ibadan was amused at the thought of a worthwhile novel being written by an alumnus.

In Achebe published No Longer at Ease , a novel about a civil servant named Obi, grandson of Things Fall Apart ' s main character, who is embroiled in the corruption of Lagos. Achebe used the fellowship to tour East Africa. He first travelled to Kenya , where he was required to complete an immigration form by checking a box indicating his ethnicity: European , Asiatic , Arab , or Other.

Shocked and dismayed at being forced into an "Other" identity, he found the situation "almost funny" and took an extra form as a souvenir. Radio programs were broadcast in Swahili, and its use was widespread in the countries he visited. Nevertheless, he found an "apathy" among the people toward literature written in Swahili. He met the poet Sheikh Shaaban Robert , who complained of the difficulty he had faced in trying to publish his Swahili-language work.

Interrogated by the ticket taker as to why he was sitting in the front, he replied, "if you must know I come from Nigeria, and there we sit where we like in the bus. Achebe worried that the vibrant literature of the nation would be lost if left untranslated into a more widely spoken language. Achebe became particularly saddened by the evidence of corruption and silencing of political opposition.

Among the topics of discussion was an attempt to determine whether the term African literature ought to include work from the diaspora , or solely that writing composed by people living within the continent itself. Achebe indicated that it was not "a very significant question", [ 61 ] and that scholars would do well to wait until a body of work was large enough to judge.

Writing about the conference in several journals, Achebe hailed it as a milestone for the literature of Africa, and highlighted the importance of community among isolated voices on the continent and beyond. Impressed, he sent it to Alan Hill at Heinemann, which published it two years later to coincide with its paperback line of books from African writers.

Achebe published an essay entitled "Where Angels Fear to Tread" in the December issue of Nigeria Magazine in reaction to critiques African work was receiving from international authors. The essay distinguished between the hostile critic entirely negative , the amazed critic entirely positive , and the conscious critic who seeks a balance.

He lashed out at those who critiqued African writers from the outside, saying: "no man can understand another whose language he does not speak and 'language' here does not mean simply words, but a man's entire worldview. Achebe and Christie married on 10 September , [ 49 ] holding the ceremony in the Chapel of Resurrection on the campus of the University of Ibadan.

Their last child, a daughter, named Nwando , was born on 7 March When the children began attending school in Lagos, their parents became worried about the worldview—especially with regard to race, gender and how Africans were portrayed—expressed at the school, particularly through the mostly white teachers and books that presented a prejudiced view of African life.

Achebe's third book, Arrow of God , was published in When an acquaintance showed him a series of papers from colonial officers, Achebe combined these strands of history and began work on Arrow of God. Like its predecessors, the work explores the intersections of Igbo tradition and European Christianity. Set in the village of Umuaro at the start of the twentieth century, the novel tells the story of Ezeulu, a Chief Priest of Ulu.

Ezeulu is consumed by the resulting tragedy. Achebe's fourth novel, A Man of the People , was published in Upon reading an advance copy of the novel, Achebe's friend John Pepper Clark declared: "Chinua, I know you are a prophet. Everything in this book has happened except a military coup! Commanders in other areas failed, and the coup was followed by a military crackdown.

A massacre of three thousand people from the eastern region living in the north occurred soon afterwards, and stories of other attacks on Igbo Nigerians began to filter into Lagos. The ending of his novel had brought Achebe to the attention of the Nigerian Armed Forces , who suspected him of having foreknowledge of the coup. When he received word of the pursuit, he sent his wife who was pregnant and children on a squalid boat through a series of unseen creeks to the Eastern stronghold of Port Harcourt.

They arrived safely, but Christie suffered a miscarriage at the journey's end. Chinua rejoined them soon afterwards in Ogidi. These cities were safe from military incursion because they were in the southeast, a part of the region that would later secede. Once the family had resettled in Enugu, Achebe and his friend Christopher Okigbo started a publishing house called Citadel Press to improve the quality and increase the quantity of literature available to younger readers.

One of its first submissions was a story called How the Dog was Domesticated , which Achebe revised and rewrote, turning it into a complex allegory for the country's political tumult. In May , the southeastern region of Nigeria broke away to form the Republic of Biafra ; in July the Nigerian military attacked to suppress what it considered an unlawful rebellion.

As the war intensified, the Achebe family was forced to leave Enugu for the Biafran capital of Aba. He continued to write throughout the war, but most of his creative work during this time took the form of poetry. The shorter format was a consequence of living in a war zone. One of his most famous, "Refugee Mother and Child", spoke to the suffering and loss that surrounded him.

Dedicated to the promise of Biafra, he accepted a request to serve as foreign ambassador, refusing an invitation from the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University in the US. Speaking in , Achebe said: "I find the Nigerian situation untenable. Conditions in Biafra worsened as the war continued. In September , the city of Aba fell to the Nigerian military and Achebe once again moved his family, this time to Umuahia , where the Biafran government had relocated.

He was chosen to chair the newly formed National Guidance Committee, charged with the task of drafting principles and ideas for the post-war era. They visited thirty college campuses and conducted numerous interviews. At the end of the tour, he said that "world policy is absolutely ruthless and unfeeling". The beginning of saw the end of the state of Biafra.

On 12 January, the military surrendered to Nigeria, and Achebe returned with his family to Ogidi, where their home had been destroyed. He was unable to accept invitations to other countries, however, because the Nigerian government revoked his passport due to his support for Biafra. After the war, Achebe helped start two magazines in the literary journal Okike , a forum for African art, fiction, and poetry; [ 97 ] and Nsukkascope , an internal publication of the university.

It was the th book in Heinemann's African Writers Series. Their youngest daughter was displeased with her nursery school, and the family soon learned that her frustration involved language. Achebe helped her face what he called the "alien experience" by telling her stories during the car trips to and from school. As he presented his lessons to a wide variety of students he taught only one class, to a large audience , he began to study the perceptions of Africa in Western scholarship: "Africa is not like anywhere else they know [ In a comment which has often been quoted Schweitzer says: 'The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother.

The lecture was controversial immediately following his talk. Many English professors in attendance were upset by his remarks; one elderly professor reportedly approached him, said: "How dare you! Another suggested that Achebe had "no sense of humour", [ ] but several days later Achebe was approached by a third professor, who told him: "I now realize that I had never really read Heart of Darkness although I have taught it for years.

Achebe's criticism has become a mainstream perspective on Conrad's work. The essay was included in the Norton critical edition of Conrad's novel. Editor Robert Kimbrough called it one of "the three most important events in Heart of Darkness criticism since the second edition of his book. I am saying, read it—with the kind of understanding and with the knowledge I talk about.

The year brought the release of Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah. His first novel in more than 20 years, it was shortlisted for the Booker McConnell Prize. The following year, he published Hopes and Impediments. The s began with tragedy: Achebe was in a car accident in Nigeria that left him paralyzed from the waist down and would confine him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Achebe won several awards over the course of his writing career, including the Man Booker International Prize and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize Additionally, he received honorary degrees from more than 30 universities around the world. Achebe died on March 21, , at the age of 82, in Boston, Massachusetts. We strive for accuracy and fairness.

If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! That same year, he co-founded a publishing company with Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo. In , he became an editor for Okike, a prestigious Nigerian literary magazine. In , he founded Iwa ndi Ibo, a bilingual publication dedicated to Igbo cultural life. Achebe's university career was extremely successful: he was made Emeritus Professor at the University of Nigeria in ; he taught at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut; and he received over twenty honorary doctorates from universities around the world.

He also received Nigeria's highest honor for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award, in Achebe became active in Nigerian politics in the s. Many of his novels dealt with the social and political problems facing his country, including the difficulties of the post-colonial legacy. When Biafra, an Eastern region in Nigeria, declared independence in , Achebe put aside writing long fiction in order to spend thirty months traveling Europe and the United States advocating for the new country.

During this period, he produced several short stories dealing with the complex realities of the Nigerian Civil War; the best known of these stories is "Civil Peace". Several decades later, in , Achebe was forced to flee Nigeria after the repressive regime threatened to imprison him for his political stances and activism.