Things Fall Apart

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama

Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.

With more than twenty million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe not only captures life in a precolonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

“African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison

“Things Fall Apart may well be Africa’s best-loved novel. . . . For so many readers around the world, it is Chinua Achebe who has opened up the magic casements of African fiction.” —Kwame Anthony Appiah