Things Fall Apart | Summary, Themes, & Facts - Britannica

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External Websites

• Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research - Critical Evaluation of Chinua Achebe�s novel, �Things Fall Apart�
• ABC Radio National - Books and Arts - African Book Club: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
• Internet Archive - "Things Fall Apart"
• Literary Devices - Things Fall Apart
• BBC - Witness History - Chinua AchebeÂ’s revolutionary book Things Fall Apart
• CORE - Reading Chinua Achebe�s Things Fall Apart from the Postcolonial Perspective
• The Criterion: An International Journal in English - Re-Presenting the History of the Margin: Things Fall Apart (PDF)

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Things Fall Apart, first novel by Chinua Achebe, written in English and published in 1958. Things Fall Apart helped create the Nigerian literary renaissance of the 1960s.

The novel chronicles the life of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo community, from the events leading up to his banishment from the community for accidentally killing a clansman, through the seven years of his exile, to his return, and it addresses a particular problem of emergent Africa—the intrusion in the 1890s of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society. Traditionally structured, and peppered with Igbo proverbs, it describes the simultaneous disintegration of its protagonist Okonkwo and of his village. The novel was praised for its intelligent and realistic treatment of tribal beliefs and of psychological disintegration coincident with social unraveling.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.