Things Fall Apart

This is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, ‘Things Fall Apart’ explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.

With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, ‘Things Fall Apart’ provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. His first novel, ‘Things Falls Apart’, became a classic of international literature and required reading for students worldwide.

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s ‘The Great American Read’. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement.