Things Fall Apart (Original Edition)

from lilyfathersjoy

My elder daughter is reading this for a literature course, right after tackling Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. This is an interesting juxtaposition. Conrad is writing about one white man's view of the Congo in the nineteenth century; Achebe is writing from several viewpoints of people dwellin...

from eldang

Wow. For the first half of this book I thought it a bit artless and frustrating, but it turns into a very much cleverer and more subtle work than I had been expecting. Ultimately the book is utterly damning about colonialism without ever romanticising what came before it. I feel weird tagging "sp...

from Crazymamie

This book is beautifully written with sparse prose that uses simple words to convey complex, layered connotations. It reads like an allegory or a parable, and yet, it is more than that. Achebe uses language in a way which reminds me of what Hemingway achieved: tell the story, don't explain it, do...

from browner56

One of the chief functions of a good novelist is to challenge the way that the reader sees the world, a task that can be accomplished either subtly or dramatically. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe manages to confront his audience both ways. Told from the perspective of the Ibo tribesmen in Nigeria, ...

from ex_ottoyuhr

I'm not sure what to say about the English in this book, but I'm confident that I can at least say this: if you like Okonkwo as a person -- and I certainly did! -- you need to read Pearl Buck's Sons. Wang the Tiger is a very similar sort of person, except that he has a private army.