Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Introduction

Any literary institution is important to write to the force of tradition from which it takes birth. Thus alongside the African readers who read the story of Okonkwo at the age when they write their first essay, they are very numerous, the authors, who have found their sense of prose by reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Starting with Ngugi wa Thiong'o, one could cite Ama Ata Aidoo, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Marechera, not to mention Ben Okri, Chris Abani and therefore, Chimamanda Adichie. They are very few, really, the African prose writers whose pen has not untied in contact with the sentence transparent Achebe (Ogbaa). And that means the birth of African writing has taken place, either because these authors have decided to remain faithful to the path traced by mimicking him, even if by pushing her into unimaginable extremes, or else because that 'they have chosen to differentiate themselves from him, for example by continuing rather the deconstruction of language and narration inaugurated The Aura of Palmwine Drinkard Amos Tutuola, published before Things Fall Apart, path whose origin is in in fact Fagunwa.

Discussion

In the recent volume of his memoirs as a writer, You Must Set Forth at Dawn, Wole Soyinka, the first and so far only Nobel Prize for Literature from black Africa, ultimate literary giant of the continent, if any yet, made a remarkable confession. In Israel where he is, he is suddenly stopped in the street by Ghanaian soldiers of the UN who recognize his famous mop of hair. Coincidence of coincidences, one of them is reading his poems!

It's simple, there is no African novel, there is no literary work of African, or black, whose fiftieth anniversary of the publication to be a literary event! Black Hosts of our dear Senghor? No. The Notebook of a return home of Césaire? Hmm. Mongo Beti's Mission completed? Nada. But this event, the first African novel 'Things Fall Apart as is falsely called, is because the first position of this book as a literary institution (Achebe). And that is to say, because it is situated at the beginning of the African prose, he carried on his shoulders in his way, with the legendary 'African Writers Series, Heinemann he introduced and that French publishers have continued to imitate ('Black Ink' by L'Harmattan, 'black Continents' by Gallimard, etc.., etc..) without ever reaching the pragmatic dimension of educational at the same time as internationally significant. What renowned African author was not published in English, that is to say, has not found a truly international audience, in the AWS, before it is scuttled as is the case TODAY 'Today?

Leopold Sedar Senghor, Sembene Ousmane, Nadine Gordimer, to Mongo Beti, Wole Soyinka, Dambudzo Marechera, Ferdinand Oyono, the youngest, Yvonne Vera, Chris Morris, Calixthe Beyala, which is not spent? Thus inaugurating a system that linked the publication of volunteer readers, who would buy books of their choice in bookshops in Melbourne, Calcutta or Berlin, to students in Kampala, or Johannesburg ...