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Article: Notes from the editor reading African writing: fifty years after Things Fall Apart.(Editorial)
- Article from:
- ARIEL
- Article date:
- October 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 University of Calgary, Department of English. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Fifty years ago in 1958 Chinua Achebe's remarkable novel, Things Fait Apart was published. In the story of Okonkwo and his Igbo village at the moment of contact with colonization, Achebe created what Simon Gikandi has called "an archeology of the African past" (21). The life and rituals of the village, told from the perspective of Okonkwo and his family, are disrupted by the arrival of colonizers and missionaries, who win over many of the population to new customs. Achebe's novel is compelling, not only for subtle descriptions in its final chapters of how colonization dismantles--bit by bit--the apparently solid foundations of traditional customs, but also for probing ...