Things Fall Apart

Both my daughters had to study Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart at school so it was lying around the house in an end-of-year pile and I thought I may as well read it. I haven't read much African literature, though I didn't realise it was first published in 1958!

It's pretty short, which is probably one reason why it's popular as a school text, and it was definitely interesting to read a book set in such a different culture, pre-colonial Nigeria. The younger daughter helpfully informed me that Achebe was keen to replicate the rhythms and tropes of traditional story-telling in his novel, which was a good thing to keep in mind. However, I wasn't completely satisfied with the reading experience: events occurred, one thing happened after another, but it wasn't until the very end of the novel that those events cohered into something like a story.

I'm not sorry I read Things Fall Apart but I might try a different Achebe novel next time.