Cultura

CHINUA ACHEBE
Chinua Achebe is one of Nigeria's greatest novelists. His novels are written mainly for an African audience, but having been translated into more than forty languages, they have foundworldwide readership. Chinua Achebe was born on November 15, 1930, in Ogidi in Eastern Nigeria. Achebe was brought up as a Christian, but he remained curious about the more traditional Nigerianfaiths. He was educated at a government college in Umuahia, Nigeria, and graduated from the University College at Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1954. Achebe was unhappy with books about Africa written by Britishauthors such as Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) and John Buchan (1875–1940), because he felt the descriptions of African people were inaccurate and insulting. While working for the Nigerian BroadcastingCorporation he composed his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1959), the story of a traditional warrior hero who is unable to adapt to changing conditions in the early days of British rule.Years later, in1997, the Performance Studio Workshop of Nigeria put on a production of the play, which was then presented in the United States as part of the Kennedy Center's African Odyssey series in 1999. Achebe'snext two novels, No Longer At Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964), were set in the past as well. By the mid-1960s the newness of independence had died out in Nigeria. Achebe wrote A Man of the People(1966), a story about a crooked Nigerian politician. The book was published at the very moment a military takeover removed the old political leadership. This made some Northern military officers suspectthat Achebe had played a role in the takeover, but there was never any evidence supporting the theory. During the years when Biafra attempted to break itself off as a separate state from Nigeria(1967–70), however, Achebe served as an ambassador (representative) to Biafra. He traveled to different countries discussing the problems of his people, especially the starving and slaughtering of Igbo...