Chinua Achebe

“I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.”

Chinua Achebe was born in 16 November of 1930. He is a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. Born to Christian evangelical parents he was raised in a town Ogidi, in Igbo land, in Eastern Nigeria. He is best known for his first novel “Things Fall Apart”.

He was raised by his parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria; Achebe excelled at school and won a scholarship for undergraduate studies. He became fascinated with world religions and traditional African cultures. His novels focus on the traditions of Igbo society, the effect of Christian influences, and the clash of Western and Traditional African values during and after the colonial era.

In 1975, his lecture of “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" became the focus of controversy.

Achebe writes his novels in English and has defended the use of English, a "language of colonizers", in African literature. He is one writer who has always been involved in his country’s depicting the problems and difficulties faced by his countrymen.

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