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Article: African Heart, No Darkness.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- July 10, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 The Nation Company L.P. 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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Home and Exile. By Chinua Achebe. Oxford. 110 pp. $20.
A revealing question: Why has V.S. Naipaul come to be much better known in the West than the great African writer Chinua Achebe? The two men are virtually the same age; Achebe turns 70 this year, Naipaul is two years younger. Both started off in what were still British colonies, Achebe in Nigeria, Naipaul on the West Indian island of Trinidad. Both, writing in English, achieved tremendous early success; Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958), a compelling look at how his ancestors in Igboland responded to colonialism, went on to become the bestselling African novel of all time, with several million copies in print. ...