ACHEBE, Chinua
This celebrated Nigerian author, critic, teacher and diplomat was born at Ogidi in eastern Nigeria on 16 November 1930. The son of one of the first lbo Mission teachers, he was educated at the Church Missionary Society School and the Government College in Umuahia before attending Ibadan University. Achebe worked as a broadcaster with the Nigerian Broadcasting Company in 1954 and became its first director of external broadcasting in 1961. Five years later he resigned in order to devote more time to his writing. During the Biafran struggle for independence 1967-69), he served as a Biafran diplomat. Achebe then lectured widely in Europe and North America and became Director of African Studies at the University of Nigeria. He began editing Okike, a literary journal, in 1971. His works include such novels as Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964) and A Man of the People (1966). His poetry appeared in such collections as Beware, Soul Brothers (1971), Christmas at Biafra and Other Poems (1973) and Collected Poems (2004). His short stories were published in such collections as The Sacrificial Egg (1962), and Girls at War and Other Stories (1973). He also wrote a children’s tale, Chike and the River (1966). Considered by many critics to be one of Africa’s greatest writers, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart has sold over 10 million copies around the world and has been translated into fifty languages. His novels deal mainly with the psychological disorientation accompanying the imposition of Western customs and values upon traditional African society. His treatise of literary criticism, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, has become one of the most controversial essays of its kind. Achebe is an Honorary Fellow of the Modern Language Association of America (1975); a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature of London (1981), and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1982). In 2004, he was awarded the prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. He is also the recipient of over thirty honorary degrees from universities in Canada, England, Nigeria, Scotland, South Africa and the United States and his works have won numerous prizes and awards. In 2004, however, he refused to accept the Commander of the Federal Republic, Nigeria’s highest honour, in protest over the state of affairs in his native country.