Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart is a 1958 English-language novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and widely read and studied in English-speaking countries around the world. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first African novels written in English to receive global critical acclaim. The title of the novel comes from William Butler Yeats poem "The Second Coming"[1].



The novel concerns the life of Okonkwo, a leader and local wrestling champion throughout the nine villages of the Igbo ethnic group of Umuofia in Nigeria, his three wives, his children (mainly concerning his oldest son Nwoye and his favorite daughter Ezinma), and the influences of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on his traditional Igbo (archaically spelled "Ibo") community during an unspecified time in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.



It was followed by a sequel, No Longer at Ease (1960), originally written as the second part of a larger work together with Things Fall Apart, and Arrow of God (1964), on a similar subject. Achebe states that his two later novels, A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987), while not featuring Okonkwo s descendants and indeed set in completely fictional African countries, are spiritual successors to the previous novels in chronicling African history.

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