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Chinua Achebe: "A Writer of Our Story"
March 10, 2008

For anyone who has read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: read this profile by The Washington Post's Bob Thompson.

For anyone who hasn't read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: read this profile by The Washington Post's Bob Thompson, then hurry and grab a copy of Achebe's masterpiece and read it, too.

One of the anecdotes in the article:

"[Achebe] is not entirely certain just how "Things Fall Apart" came into the world.

'It's a little mysterious in some ways,' he says. The book 'seized me, and almost wrote me. I'm not quite sure I wrote it.'

Looking to elaborate, he invokes his 'chi,' the personal spiritual guardian that Achebe's people, the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria, believe accompanies each individual from birth to death. The concept is hard to translate, but one's chi, in effect, personifies one's fate.

'It was almost like my chi was making me into what I was to be,' Achebe says. 'Namely, a writer of our story.'"

One of the beauties and mysteries of fiction, of course, is how a novel written in Nigeria in 1958 feels like "our story," too, when we read it. Congratulations, Chinua Achebe -- and thank you. Dalu.

                                                                       

Posted by Bethanne Patrick on March 10, 2008 | Comments (0)