Prof Chinua Achebe, a literary icon, world renowned author & teacher, passed on

Chinua Achebe

Acclaimed novelist and poet - Chinua Achebe, who first made his mark with the 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, has died aged 82.

He died last night at a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts of an undisclosed ailment.

Up till his death, Achebe worked as Professor of African Studies at Brown University and was the David and Marianna University Professor.

Achebe was born in Ogidi, Anambra State, on November 16, 1930. At the age of 12 he moved several kilometres away from his family to Nekede to attend the Central School there before attending Government College Umuahia for his secondary school education.

He was one of the first students to attend the University College, now University of Ibadan in 1948. Having first opted to study medicine he switched to English, history and theology after his first year.

After winning his degree Achebe taught at Ibadan before joining the Nigeria Broadcasting Service in 1954.
His 1958 novel: Things Fall Apart, set amid 1890s Nigeria and the influx of Christian missionaries, is renowned the world over, has been translated into 50 languages and has sold more than 10 million copies.
The novel takes its title from WB Yeats's 1919 poem "The Second Coming": "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

During the country's Civil War (1967 -1970),  Achebe joined the Biafran Government as an Ambassador. He wrote about his experiences in his last book, There Was A Country.

Achebe's other novels include Arrow of God (1964); A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). He has also published four children's books (including Chike and the River and How the Leopard Got His Claws), short stories and poetry in English and Igbo.

His 1975 lecture An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' is still available in paperback from Penguin Classics. In it, he says that "Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist" and points out that there are only six words spoken by Africans in the whole of Heart of Darkness.
Nelson Mandela called him "the writer in whose company the prison walls came down", and credited him as the author who "brought Africa to the rest of the world"

In 2007, Achebe won the Man Booker International Prize for his “overall contribution to fiction on the world stage”.

He met his wife Christie Okoli while in Lagos and the couple married in 1961 going on to have four children.