Nigeria

Book: Things Fall Apart

Author: Chinua Achebe

Finished: May 10, 2025

I think I have been aware of this novel since high school; I forget if it was on a course syllabus or just a summer reading suggestion. But I didn't realize its significance until looking it up just now. It seems this book was one of the first novels about Africa to be written by a native of Africa and described the tribal customs with neutrality. Though it was written by a Nigerian man, he chose to write the manuscript in English because his tribal language was a blend of many dialects and did not have a smooth written form.

The plot follows Okonkwo, an Igbo warrior from Umuofia. He is a well-known wrestler and a hard-worker, the antithesis of his lazy father. Against the backdrop of tribal customs, the story's conflict is about the white missionaries who begin to settle in Umuofia and Mbanta, Okonkwo's motherland, and try to convert the local tribespeople to Christianity.

I enjoyed this more than I think I expected to. It was written very concisely and the author didn't dwell on extraneous facts or happenings. That said, because it was so terse, there wasn't a lot of atmosphere or emotion behind the characters which made it seem a bit clinical. I can't tell from the book, which takes places in the late 1800s, whether that is a trait of the Nigerian people or a result of the writing style used by the author, but for me it was a fairly quick and enjoyable read.