Things Fall Apart
written by Chinua Achebe



Facts about the author:

Chinua achebe was born in Ogidi, in Eastern Nigeria, in 1930.His father was
one of the early Ibo converts to Christianity who was evangelist and teacher in
the church Missionary Society’s village school.Chinua attended his
father’s school and having started to learn English at about the age of
eight, went on to Government College, in 1944.In 1948 he entered University
College and began to study medicine in Ibadan where he graduated in 1953.After
teaching for a few months, he joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in
1954 as a Talks Producer and rose, by way of being Head of the Talks Section
(1957) and Controller, Estern Region (1959), to become Director of External
Services in 1961.His job took him on long journeys about Nigeria and, as he
drove, his mind was busy reviewing the history and life of his people and
casting this mass of unique material in the classical fictional moulds he had
studied at university.This resulted, in 1958, in the publication of his first
novel, Things fall Apart.It was an immediate success and he won the
Margaret Wrong Prize.No Longer At Ease was published in 1960 and won the
Nigerian National Trophy.Arrow of God came out in 1964 and his fourth,
and so far his last, novel, A Man of the People, appeared in 1966.

With the massacre of the Ibos in Northern Nigeria in 1966 and the beginning
of the Nigerian Troubles, he resigned from the Broadcasting Corporation and
moved back to Eastern Nigeria.During the civil war he taught for two years in
the United States.The Biafran conflict and his experiences with the war have had
a profound effect on Achebe.He wrote about ...