Things Come Together

Chinua Achebe's masterpiece is still the centerpiece of contemporary African literature.

by Joel Tannenbaum

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The Roots didn't name their acclaimed 1999 album Things Fall Apart after W.B. Yeats, even though there is such a phrase in his creepy poem, "The Second Coming."

Rather, the title was a nod to the first novel by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, a powerful allegory about colonial destruction set in an isolated Igbo village in the 1890s. Yeats wrote, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," to describe the atrocities he saw in World War I. Achebe used it to describe the effects of Christianity and British rule on village life in Africa. Things Fall Apart was published in 1958 and quickly became the centerpiece of contemporary African literature, even though its sad, doomed tone was out of step with the nationalist optimism prevalent in Africa at the time. By 1960, Nigeria would be independent. By 1967, it would be immersed in one of the bloodiest civil wars of the 20th century. Things fall apart, indeed.

The book was a declaration of independence for African literature. It tells the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo villager who rises from humble beginnings to become despotic and respected, only to lose everything in confusion and exile. Confronted with the problem of telling a colonial story using the colonizers' language, Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart in a distinctly African English — taut, economical, metaphorical.

But Achebe's courage came at a price. Things Fall Apart wasn't just attacking colonialism; it was attacking the literary canon, specifically Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Authors like Conrad, although ostensibly anti-colonial, used Africa as a metaphor for senselessness, for unreason. Things Fall Apart called bullshit on this: Everything that happened in Okonkwo's village happened for a reason. If it didn't make sense to you, it was because you weren't paying enough attention. Maybe that's why it took the Brits until 2007 to award Achebe the Man Booker prize, and why the Nobel folks still haven't given him the time of day.

Achebe is more appreciated in America, where Things Fall Apart holds a revered place in both African and African-American studies curriculums. Achebe will be in town this week celebrating the novel's 50th anniversary at the Free Library, where he'll be interviewed by local novelist Lorene Carey.

(j_tannenbaum@citypaper.net)

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart 50th anniversary interview, Thu., March 27, 8 p.m., $14, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5322, library.phila.gov.