Chinua Achebe

Abstract

My first encounter with Achebe was in early 1970s and I can vividly recall when in my second year High School, I encountered Things Fall Apart, Achebe's first novel. This was due to the influence of the now famous Ngugi revolution, at least I would learn later, which called for the re-location of African literature at the core of our English literature syllabus. The East African Examination Council, which had just replaced the Cambridge Overseas examination, had grudgingly introduced a few titles by African writers to supplement what was predominantly an English syllabus.