Product Description

Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries.

These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #802 in Books
• Published on: 1994-09
• Released on: 1994-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.com Review
One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy:

Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.

And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.

Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. --Alix Wilber

From Library Journal
Peter Frances James offers a superb narration of Nigerian novelist Achebe's deceptively simple 1959 masterpiece. In direct, almost fable-like prose, it depicts the rise and fall of Okonkwo, a Nigerian whose sense of manliness is more akin to that of his warrior ancestors than to that of his fellow clansmen who have converted to Christianity and are appeasing the British administrators who infiltrate their village. The tough, proud, hardworking Okonkwo is at once a quintessential old-order Nigerian and a universal character in whom sons of all races have identified the figure of their father. Achebe creates a many-sided picture of village life and a sympathetic hero. A good recording of this novel has been long overdue, and the unhurried grace and quiet dignity of James's narration make it essential for every collection.?Peter Josyph, New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Okonkwo, driven by blinding ambition, finally overcomes his father's legacy of shame. Or does he? In the Ibo village of Umuofia at a time when the tribe is intact, the gods are respected, and planting yams is a man's principal responsibility, Achebe tells, above all, a man's story. Like Okonkwo's life, it is clean, hard and beautiful, but finally painful when the orderly, peaceful village life comes crashing into Christianity. Peter Francis James's bass voice resonates perfectly with the elevated diction and multiple voices of Achebe's novel. It's a firm, sometimes furious voice, when speaking the powerful Okonkwo, but yielding and playful with his daughter, Ezinma. Full of melodic richness, James projects Achebe's genuinely African cadences with a power and dignity equal to his vision, giving us finally in audio the most moving picture ever of African village life by an African. P.E.F. Winner of AUDIOFILE's Earphones Award (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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Customer Reviews

Erm....
I absolutely HATED reading this book. I respect it as a very popular piece of literature, but in truth I spent more time sounding out all of the names in this then actually reading it!

Things Fall Apart
It's rare to find a book that can be at once so severe and so touching. This is a fantastic and emotionally charged book of a view of Africa that is not always revealed to the world in such a way in suh honest color. While Achebe clearly cares for the culture, he is not afraid to hide what is true about it. The result is a deeply moving look into the way of people and how they relate themselves to the rest of world as it changes.

Terrific
This is a transcendant book about the culture, mores, and primitively beautiful ways of a place and people most of us will never get a chance to experience first-hand. The prose is terse and close, but worlds of emotion -- agony, love and surprise -- shine through at every turn. Above all, perhaps, the story is wildly interesting.