Jonathan Kandell of the New York Times is reporting that literary great Chinua Achebe has died after a brief illness. Kandell writes:
“Besides novels, Mr. Achebe’s works included powerful essays and poignant short stories and poems rooted in the countryside and cities of his native Nigeria, before and after independence from British colonial rule. His most memorable fictional characters were buffeted and bewildered by the conflicting pulls of traditional African culture and invasive Western values.
For inspiration, Mr. Achebe drew on his own family history as part of the Ibo nation of southeastern Nigeria, a people victimized by the racism of British colonial administrators and then by the brutality of military dictators from other Nigerian ethnic groups.
Mr. Achebe burst onto the world literary scene with the publication in 1958 of his first novel, “Things Fall Apart,” which sold millions of copies and was translated into 45 different languages.”
There are few details surrounding the literary giant’s death as this story is still developing. Mr. Achebe was 82.
Read more at The New York Times. Check back later for an original post about Mr. Achebe’s work on The Burton Wire.
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[…] African literary legend Chinua Achebe died last week at the age of 82. While re-reading, re-imagining and revisiting his work, we came across this video of interest, in which Mr. Achebe discusses the devastating impact of colonization on Africa. Listen to what the man referred to as the “Grandfather of African Literature” has to say about colonization which he says was “made possible by the devastation of the slave trade that came before.” […]
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