Nigerian national awards cannot also be written without the name Chinua Achebe.
Nigerian academia will also be robbed if Achebe is denied a mention.
But what do you know about him?
Chinua Achebe, poet and novelist, is one of the most important living African writers.
He is also considered one of the most original literary artists currently writing in English.
Born Albert Chinualumogo Achebe, Chinua Achebe was raised by Christian evangelical parents in the large village Ogidi, in Igboland, Eastern Nigeria.
He received early education in English, but grew up surrounded by the complex fusion of Igbo traditions and the colonial legacy.
He studied literature and medicine at the University of Ibadan; after graduating, he went to work for the Nigerian Broadcasting Company in Lagos.
Things Fall Apart (1958) was his first novel. It has been translated into at least forty-five languages, and has sold eight million copies worldwide.
Although Achebe writes in English, he attempts to incorporate Igbo vocabulary and narratives.
Other novels include: No Longer At Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), and A Man of the People (1966). Achebe has over 80works to his credit/
He left his career in radio in 1966, during the national unrest and violence that led to the Biafran War. He narrowly escaped harm at the hands of soldiers who believed that his novel, A Man of the People, implicated him in the country's first military coup. He began an academic career the next year, taking a position as Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria. That same year, he co-founded a publishing company with Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo.
Achebe's recent book THERE WAS A COUNTRY was one of the first books we critiqued here, because Achebe by all standards is a boundless person.
But so much dust has been raised from different quarters especially the 'Awo' followers.
If you havnt read this book, you should. It has been heavily criticised by every reader, so i will like to hear your take. But i must say it offers no easy answers for Nigeria, reason reactions are yet to abate.
It is the story of the 3year long Biafran war and Achebe confronts the bitter truth that since independence, $400billion has been lost from Nigeria’s treasury through corruption.
Achebe ends the book with a poem: 'After a war.'
"After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normality like vines entwining a hollow twig; its famished roots close on rubble and every piece of broken glass."
wao! on which part of the broken glass do you belong?
One boundless love.
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