The Nigerian novelist who realised that if Africa's story kept being told by outsiders, Africans would have to become its historians.
This is a talking lesson, not a reading one. So before a single fact, the floor is yours.
Just his name and the title of his first novel: Things Fall Apart. Have you read it, studied it, or heard it mentioned? Which books — or films — shaped your picture of Africa, and who made them? Just talk.
Three short beats. After each one, you do the talking.
Chinua Achebe was born on 16 November 1930 near the Igbo village of Ogidi, in what was then the British colony of Nigeria. His father was a teacher and evangelist for the church, so he grew up between two worlds: Igbo tradition on one side, colonial Christianity on the other. Looking back in a 1994 interview, he said that as a boy reading adventure stories, “I instinctively took sides with the white people” — he did not realise he was supposed to be one of the “savages”.
In 1948 he was in the first intake of students at Nigeria's new University College in Ibadan, on a bursary to study medicine. There he became sharply critical of how Western novels portrayed Africa — especially Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson, whose Nigerian characters were savages or buffoons. He switched from medicine to English, history and theology, and lost his scholarship for it.
He posted the handwritten manuscript of his first novel — his only copy — to a London typing agency, paid the fee, and then heard nothing for months. His boss at the Nigerian Broadcasting Service, Angela Beattie, went to the agency in person while she was in London and demanded the typed copy. Things Fall Apart was published by Heinemann in 1958. It has since been translated into more than 50 languages.
Achebe's big idea is about who gets to tell the story. I will hand it to you in small pieces. After each piece, you talk — I will mostly listen.
In a 1994 interview with The Paris Review, Achebe explained why he became a writer. He did not claim the key line as his own — he called it “that great proverb”: “until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Then he added: “Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian.”
Before I go on: think of a story — from history, the news, your own family or workplace — that has mostly been told by the “hunter”. What would the lion's version sound like?
Things Fall Apart is the lion's version. Its hero, Okonkwo, is a famous wrestler and warrior in the village of Umuofia — proud, hard, and deeply flawed. The Igbo world around him is complex: it has law, religion, debate and art. Then missionaries and colonial officials arrive, and that world begins to break. In the final lines, a British District Commissioner looks at what has happened and thinks it will make an interesting chapter in his book, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
He chose to write in English — he defended it as a way to reach a broad audience — but he reshaped its idiom and rhythm to carry Igbo speech and thought. In the novel's first chapter he writes: “Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.” In 1975, in a lecture called “An Image of Africa”, he went after Heart of Darkness directly, calling Conrad “a bloody racist” (the published version says “a thoroughgoing racist”). It caused a storm — but the essay is now included in a standard student edition of Conrad's novel.
The question Achebe forces on every reader is not only “Is this story true?” but “Whose story is it — and who was left holding the pen?”
“Only people from a culture can tell its story truthfully.” Argue for it or against it — with real examples of books, films or journalism about places or people you know. Build your case, then I will push back and you defend it.
Achebe kept returning to power, history and storytelling in different forms. Glance at these, then tell me which one you would actually read first, and why that one.
| Work | What it is | The idea underneath |
|---|---|---|
| Things Fall Apart (1958) | His first novel: Okonkwo and the coming of colonialism to an Igbo village. | Africa's past told from the inside, with its complexity intact. |
| No Longer at Ease (1960) | Obi, a civil servant and Okonkwo's grandson, gets caught up in the corruption of Lagos. | Tradition and modern city life pulling one person in two directions. |
| Arrow of God (1964) | Ezeulu, the chief priest of a village god, confronts the power of the British Empire. | Completes the “African Trilogy” — power, faith and authority in collision. |
| “An Image of Africa” (1975) | A lecture attacking Conrad's portrayal of Africa in Heart of Darkness. | Africa reduced to “setting and backdrop” erases Africans as human beings. |
Ten words you need to discuss Achebe properly — and that work just as well for any serious conversation about history, culture and who tells the story. Tap to reveal the meaning and an example.
Pick any five of these words and say five full sentences about Achebe or about a story you think was told by the “hunter” — out loud, right now. Don't move on until all five are used.
This whole lesson is you doing the talking. These are the moves that let you speculate, hedge and push back like a C1 speaker — not just "I think" every time.
I'll make a bold claim — “Great literature is universal; it doesn't matter who writes it.” Answer me using at least one phrase from each box above: first speculate, then take a position, then complicate it. Keep going until you've used all three.
Reach for these instead of “shows” or “says” when you describe Achebe's work.
1. Things Fall Apart ____ the colonial picture of Africa as a place without history.
2. By giving Okonkwo real flaws, Achebe ____ him instead of turning him into a symbol.
3. The final paragraph ____ the arrogance of the District Commissioner with cold irony.
4. His 1975 lecture ____ one of the most respected novels in English literature.
1. counters / exposes
2. humanises / complicates
3. satirises / exposes
4. critiques / interrogates
These are not the only correct answers — defend your choice if it works.
These are Achebe's questions, handed to you. The timer is on your side: it stops you finishing in ten seconds and forces you to develop the idea. Use the speculating and position-taking phrases from the last tab, and at least one of the idea-verbs.
Pick a well-known story — a historical event, a famous film, a company's success story, even a family legend — that is usually told from one side.
Retell it from the side of the person or group who usually doesn't get to speak. Then argue: does the new version change the facts, or only the meaning? Raise the strongest objection to your view, then answer it.
In the 1950s a fierce debate broke out about which language African writers should use. Achebe chose English partly because, in a country of many languages, it gave people “a language with which to talk to one another”.
If you were a writer from a smaller language community, would you write in your own language or in a global one — and what would you gain and lose? Make the case with one concrete example from your own language.
Proverbs, Achebe wrote, are “the palm-oil with which words are eaten”. Your turn: choose a proverb from your own language or culture that carries a whole way of seeing the world.
Explain it, translate it, and show me what it reveals about the people who use it. I will then push back and test whether it really holds, and you defend it.
You introduced me to Achebe, so you get the last word. Pick the questions that grab you — there are no model answers here.
Finish this, out loud, in a single well-built sentence — and use one idea-verb and one speculating phrase from Tab 2:
"What Achebe really does, I think, is…"