Things Fall Apart: A Novel

By Chinua Achebe

The most widely read book in modern African literature tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around a fearless Igbo warrior in Nigeria in the late 1800s, before and after the European colonization of the continent.

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

The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries. These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within.

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 5, 2009
• ISBN: 9780307373212

Reviews for Things Fall Apart

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My initial rating of this book is 4 stars but I can already tell that it is a book that will linger inside me, so I may end up modifying that rating.

I don't know when this story is supposed to be set but it includes the first exposure of a Nigerian (Ibo?) society to white colonialists & missionaries. The way this impacted the people & the end of the book made me so sad and so angry at the same time.

[therebelprince · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A haunting parable. The final chapter of this book still stings my western heart with every reading. Others have written eloquently on this work - and some reviews on here posit an alternative viewpoint on the apparently uppity and unreasonable, if not downright ungrateful aims of postcolonialist literature - so you can make up your own mind on that. But gosh I think this was an important novel 60 years ago, and it remains so. A challenge to its western readership, from the use of untranslated words to its matter-of-fact, quasi-Dickensian ironic descriptions of the local culture as seen through the protagonist, and sometimes his children - already questioning their own culture, as we all do.

A complex portrayal of colonialism that twists the knife very well indeed.

[dele2451 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wasn't aware this was the beginning of a trilogy when I purchased it, but this first novel has motivated me to seek out the next two. The glossary of Igbo words and phrases was a welcome addition.

[eavans-914612 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An unlikely love, I found the writing fluid and the subject manner more intriguing then I thought it would be.

[suesbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very complicated book to review because it describes a civilization that existed in the 19th century and was very different from the way i was socialized. the protagonist is very psychologically injured by English colonizers who have no understanding of the lifestyle of their prey. however, the misogyny and violence of indigent people was not one i could agree with. there were really no people i could root for in this book, which took place in Nigeria.

[mykl8s · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Achebe, in this book, gave me a feel for at least one kind of traditional African society, and a heightened awareness of the damage done by western colonial powers. It left me with understandings and emotions I still hold, which is the best thing a book can do.

[eat_read_knit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this pretty hard to get into. The prose was stark and dispassionate, and although I found it interesting I felt no connection to the characters or involvement in the book. However, as the book progressed I became more involved. The personalities and history became more compelling, and the interactions between cultures horrifyingly gripping in an impending-train-crash kind of way. Very powerful.

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This charming little book is a fine counter-balance to the White colonial books of Conrad and his like. In Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' we see Africa and it's inhabitants as barbaric and lawless but this book tels a very different story.The story surrounds Okonkwo, a man striving to escape the shadow and shame of his father, whom was seen as a waster by his community. Okonkwo is left nothing when his father dies but through sheer hard work, physical prowess and bravery he slowly gains status within his tribe becoming one of its leaders. But Okonkwo is flawed, he is steeped in tribal traditions and is inflexible haunted by the memory of his father beating his wives and children with little justification.Yet throughout the book we also see a certain humanity. Whereas Conrad paints the natives as lawless Achebe shows that through their tribal traditions there is a structure within their community where disputes are settled by village elders. When Okonkwo accidentally kills another at a feast he and his friends and family accept his punishment of banishment and loss of status without question, to them there is no other option.However, it is Okonkwo's own inflexibility which finally brings about his own downfall. On his return from exile he finds that the White Man has arrived with his alien laws and religion and tribal laws have been pushed aside. His desire to regain his status within the tribe is thwarted. Okonkwo is unable or unwilling to adapt to these new circumstances, instead harking back to the tribes war-like past. This finally leads to his own death.This book gives a fine insight to life in Africa before the arrival of the White Man and is a worthy read as it makes us question the influence and methods of Collonial rule over local traditions. That said I failed to really connect with Okonkwo and thus it fails to get full marks

[maryroberta · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Would be interesting to have the book written from perspective of some of the women in the Niger communities.

[alycias_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am more and more interested in storytelling as a historical lineage and a human instinct, and so Things Fall Apart was really satisfying to read in light of this. I liked how removed all the characters were from the narration in the way that stories, fables are; I found it more peaceful to read than other things (1st person narratives, for example). I also enjoyed the great punchline at the very end, the last line and how different that was from the rest of the book.

[musicmom41 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was an excellent picture of Ibo clan culture and of what happens when cultures collide. The first two thirds of the book tells the story of Okonkwo, an heroic type with a tragic flaw—he is so afraid of ever appearing to be weak as he perceived his father to be that he sometimes acts too harshly until finally he commits an act that ultimately leads to his downfall. In a way, he reminded me of Othello—a decent man whose flaw leads to his destruction. In addition to Okonkwo’s story the novel also explores the consequences when the missionaries and the British government come to the area to “civilize” it. One of the strengths of the book is that the author presents his story “without prejudice” letting the reader see both the admirable and the not so admirable aspects of both cultures in this conflict as well as in the life of Okonkwo. Sometime he is difficult to like but in the end you feel real sympathy for him and his conflict.

[mausergem_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel published in 1958 is one of the first English language works telling the story of Africa. Set in a village in Nigeria, this novel recollects the ancient traditions of the villagers and the transformation that took place after the advent of the white man. The novel tells the story of Okankwo in a very simple language and provides an insight into his life. A very interesting read.

[amerynth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had a difficult time with Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart." I expected to absolutely love it, but I found it was a struggle to read and overall I just found it to be an "okay" novel. I couldn't help but compare it to other great African novels like "The River Between" & "God's Bits of Wood" and the story just didn't seem as strong. It's hard to put my finger on what I didn't love about the novel. It felt almost too fictional to me-- the characters weren't strongly drawn enough and felt a little wooden. The overall message, about the loss of cultural traditions that occurred when missionaries arrived was a great one. It's an important story to tell. This is definitely one of those books I felt like I should appreciate more than I actually did.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I suspect that this book is going to humble me as much in the reviewing as it did in the reading. I picked it up on a whim, a smug ol' consumerist "Haven't read Things Fall Apart yet" global liberal elite whim. Which is a hard term to apply to oneself, "liberal elite", especially if one's politics are such as to lead one to use the term in the first place. But here's the thing: I'm reading about the slow sad downfall of Umuofia, and wondering why it is that "divide and conquer" actually works. Like, I get why the most vicious wars are civil wars, because there's nobody else in the picture, so you can just tear at each other till exhaustion. But to my mind, if my village or my country and the next polity over are engaged in a death struggle and then people with different customs and clothes show up and start trying to impose them on us--we unite. We fight back. Right?

Only historically, and let me immediately qualify that historically by glossing it as basically "over the long sad history of European colonialism" (even if that's only slightly less ludicrous a generalization), that's not the case, is it? The Spaniards show up in Mesoamerica and immediately find Tlaxcalans willing to work with them to bring the Aztecs down. The British arrive in India and find client kingdoms aplenty and play them off against each other in an ugly cycle. Europeans bring Christianity to West Africa and find plenty of downtrodden people willing to lick spittle.

It's almost bewilderingly complex to get your head around without making any stupid generalizations. But here are a couple that I hope are only moderately stupid:

1. Everyone always underestimates the Europeans at first. We have hindsight, and the benefit of growing up within a smugly dominant Western civ, to say to us "take them seriously. Remember the Azetecs." The Aztecs (of course) don't have that opportunity. But I feel like that's not good enough--like, why is everybody so secure that their practices and their gods are the best on the world and will thrive and dominate effortlessly? I guess in the case of Umuofia, it's because they always have. It's in part a matter of limited horizons.

It's in part also because from within a 21st-century society of planners, it's hard to think about what a farming and warring society is like. I bet Okonkwo would have nothing but scorn for a Bush-era America, a superpower scared of its shadow. I may have made similar remarks. It makes me think of the upbeat to World War I, how a little less fear could have changed things. So is the answer just Aristotle? "Sometimes we exercise too little caution and are brash, sometimes too much and are fearful; both are problematic"? Shit, this is the worst review ever.

2. It's the people on the bottom who betray the common good. Because the destruction of your society is pretty fucking abstract compared to your father kicking you, Nwoye, around because you're one of the "useless people"; it's as hard to be weak in a warrior society as it is to be poor in a capitalist society, and in either case you're afraid, and thus any turn of the wheel you rationalize will be a turn for the better. I grew up safe within the dominant culture and full of food and opportunities, and my Canadian class-warrior schtick just effaces the truer way in which I'm an exploiter, prosperity built on the crimes of the past and the asymmetrical relations thereby begotten.

But all this whingy guilting and self-centred groping after explains just doesn't seem like enough. It's a testament to Achebe's art, though several degrees removed by this point, that [Things Fall Apart]drums up these feelings/questions in me. He evokes a fascinating world, tabulates the inside of the Heart of Darkness in the plain English that demystifies it for the colonizer, and it's shitty that that has to be done but it's also invaluable. And we respond to it likewise--tabulate, study, theorize, try to understand. Get a really good idea for a conference paper and write a librarything post asking for resources and say "I've already got a title: "Mumbo Jumbo and Evil Forest: Spirit language and ritual masquerade in Park's Travels and Achebe's Things Fall Apart". You flatter yourself that you're doing right after all the wrong--not that you spend a lot of time thinking it, you're not spectacularly right, just quietly, smugly, on the good side of history.

But Achebe's got your number, and when you hit the last page, he's set it up on purpose just to devastate you. "The story of this man who had killed himself and hanged a messenger would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter, but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger."

There's a tonne to say about this book, but I don't know how to say it without being that guy, that smug, exoticizing, filthy Euroimperialist guy. I don't have the language--and Achebe's already come to me and written in mine. So I'll just leave it--maybe come back to it later--but leave this failure up. It's good for a member of the global liberal elite to fail now and then. It's not like there'll ever be as much at stake as there was for Okonkwo.

Read Things Fall Apart.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Vrij kort, neutraal relaas van het leven in een dorp van de Ibo-stam (Nigeria), tijdsvak aanvankelijk onbepaald. Hoofdfiguur Okonkwo lijkt op weg om op eigen verdienste een man van aanzien te worden, maar door ongeluk, en uiteindelijk door de komst van de blanke kolonisator (dus eind 19de eeuw) stort zijn wereld in. Mooie evocatie van het stamleven, volgens de oude gebruiken; en schets van de overgang naar een koloniaal regime. Opvallend is de onthechte beschrijving, geen aanklacht, hoewel je onvermijdelijk toch een zekere sympathie met de hoofdfiguur en het "oude "leven krijgt, ondanks de donkere, wrede kanten die door Achebe niet onvermeld worden gelaten.

[writestuff_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I could definitely recommend this book to those readers who enjoy beautiful, yet simple prose. Achebe unveils his main character with stark precision and makes the reader empathize with him, despite his rough edges, anger and obvious human weaknesses.

[auntieclio · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this story. Achebe's choice of writing in English but yet to reflect the cadences of Igbo speech, gives Things Fall Apart a folkloric/storyteller feel.Set in pre-colonial Nigeria (ca. 1890s), the first 100+ pages are about Okonkwo and his clan. It's a kind of slice of African tribal village life through the seasons. There are stories about gods, illustrations of custom and clan; it's a telling of the rhythms of life.Okonkwo is a prideful man, determined not to be like his lazy father who died owing many debts. But in his pride, he willfully kills a clan member and is exiled to the land of his mother for seven years.In those seven years, things in Okonkwo's home village have changed. The white man has arrived and brought his religion and need for bureaucracy to Umuofia. As can be expected, cultures clash and, in the end, Okonkwo must decide whether he can accept these changes.Achebe wrote this book in response to the many books written about Africans as primitive. In Things Fall Apart, he writes of the complexities of Igbo society and culture, including the not so nice things. He also does not make all the white men the stereotypical bossy colonialist.By writing in English, but using the rhythm of Igbo language Achebe's book compels readers to understand that Africans are indeed not primitive. At some point, I'll be reading other books by Chinua Achebe.

[awhayouseh · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a very good book. I've always wanted to read it but did not get the chance or time to do so until last summer, 2006. The author notes the decay of the protagonist's culture (a culture that is African) with the forced introduction of foreign (European) thoughts and ways of life. However, the original culture by itself, Achebe leads us to understand, was not pristine to begin with but is worsen by foreign elements. Politics, religion, relationships between the sexes, are all touched upon in this very well written and informative work.

[lauranav_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Things Fall Apart describes a decade in the life of a member of a village on the River Niger. We learn about Okonkwo, his father, his wives and children, his role in the village, and his love of the traditions of his tribe. The first part of the book gives us a picture of what life is like, the rules of the society and the meaning they give to Okonkwo's life. We see things done for tradition's sake that are disagreeable, but accepted. Perhaps they should be questioned, but then arises the difficulty of preserving what is good while allowing debate and change.In the second and third parts, we see Okonkwo in exile and missionaries (white and black) move in to preach Jesus Christ. There are many clashes, from cultural differences between men willing to listen to each other, to violent clashes between men unwilling to learn about the other side. In the end, Okonkwo cannot bear to see his village destroyed by the change that has come.I think this is a well written book, and valuable for its insight into African life and human nature in general.

[sjh4255 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story is well written and really gives you a sense of what life in these small African communities was like with it's laws, and beliefs that may seem strange to those not familiar with them. The conflict in the book is one that shows how things really happened, and you can only imagine the fear of the strange new world that was being injected forcefully upon them. This is an important book to have in your "read" list as it shows a different side of the story most of us all know so well..

[ted_newell-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Actually I got stuck at page 80 and never got back into it (18 months ago). Can t see how else to get it off the pending list on Goodreads.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The generation who lived prior to white colonisation and the first tendrils of this colonisations effects from the perspective of a tribesman. Wonderfully told and it felt familiar because it set the scene for much of the African literature that followed.

[eldang-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow. For the first half of this book I thought it a bit artless and frustrating, but it turns into a very much cleverer and more subtle work than I had been expecting. Ultimately the book is utterly damning about colonialism without ever romanticising what came before it.

I feel weird tagging "spoilers" about a book the outlines of which are pretty well known, and the plot of which is basically described in the publisher blurb, but in spite of all that there were some surprises as I went, so here goes:

First of all, there is one thing that annoyed me intensely through the entire book: the complete lack of any development of female characters or voices. I can imagine a defence of that in terms of the book describing two intensely patriarchal cultures and their meeting, but I'm still digesting Achebe's critique of Conrad. One of his more on-point criticisms is that Conrad writes about colonialism in Africa without ever giving a single African character a real voice - it's fair, but then it rankles to see Achebe do exactly the same thing to women, especially in a book that's partly about brutal patriarchy.

The first part of the book, describing the traditional society that existed before colonisation, is an interesting mixture of pastoral and horrifying. It's not hard to see how people would value what they had, and find its disruption by outside forces intensely painful, but there's also plenty about it that is terrible. Not only the status of women (property whose only apparent chance at any agency at all is by cheating on the husband they didn't necessarily get to choose), but murder of twins, mutilation of sick childrens' corpses, and casting out of men who don't fit a very specific mould. At first I was frustrated by Achebe's stalwart refusal to allow a hint of judgement on any of this; by the end I saw it as a real strength of his writing.

Once things do start to fall apart, I came to appreciate that by keeping any editorialising out of the way, Achebe was able to let his characters and story say all that needed to be said about their own society. The real genius of the book is in its dissection of how weaknesses in the existing culture allowed missionaries to make inroads, how effectively the missionaries manipulated this (often without seeming to understand what they were doing), and yet how disastrous this all was for the people it happened to in spite of the completely unvarnished portrayal of what they had before.

[razinha-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sons were assigned this for book club and I chose to read it as well. Interesting native perspective on west African life at the turn of the last century, and a scathing reminder of the devastation effected by Christian missionaries throughout the world and conquest by western "civilization". The spare narrative doesn't stand out as particularly good literature (not that I'm one to know), but the glimpse into another culture makes it worth the read.

[cecilturtle · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The book starts off with what seems at first to be vignettes of Nigerian life in a village, stories strung together by its inhabitants. Part II quickens the pace and the hero emerges more clearly, not as a saviour but as a tragic hero who seems to live in the past. Part III delivers the final blow and what was a snippet of a life suddenly become the emblem of an entire nation, indeed of an entire continent. Masterful and unforgettable.

[michael5rimmer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was not quite what I expected. I had assumed that I would learn more about Okonkwo's life as a warrior and wrestler, as this aspect of his life was highlighted by the blurb. Instead, Achebe delivered a story of how the Ibo lived their village life before the coming of the Europeans, how their society was tied together and, which I did expect, how all this unravelled with the arrival of the Christian missionaries and European government.

I wasn't disappointed by having my expectations confounded, however. This was an engaging story and the characters well drawn. I did have difficulties in identifying with, or sympathizing with the main protagonist, Okonkwo. He seems to be a thoroughly unlikeable person through most of the book, although Achebe clearly explains why this is so. As the book is drawing to its conclusion, though, Okonkwo's struggle to protect his way of life and the Ibo culture had a redeeming quality about it and he transcended his bullying persona to become a true, if still violent, champion.

I didn't find this to be a depressing book, as other reviewers have found it. The fates of many of the characters are certainly tragic, as is the depiction of the impending demise of the Ibo culture, but I saw Okonkwo's ultimate self-sacrifice not as an act of desperation and despair, but as the act of a warrior of his people, protecting the clans against the retribution that his actions would surely bring from the governing Europeans. Ironically, it seems to me that Okonkwo ends as a somewhat Christ-like figure.

[ellsbethb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is another book that has been on my list for some time. It was an intriguing flashback to my college courses on African history and my independent study in African literature. I find myself really wanting to discuss this book with other people.

[lilibrarian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Onkonkwo is a brave warrior known in the nine villages. When white missionaries come and change the life of the villages, he is against losing his traidional ways.

[eilonwy_anne · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Understated, evocative and elegant. A beautiful model of how to write a 'simple' story that has impact and resonance. The simplicity is deceptive -- it goes hand in hand with a narrative detachment which allows the story to shift points of view easily. Also, the matter-of-fact writing, applied to a culture where the fantastic and the 'real' interplay every day, makes the cultural context of Igbo beliefs easy for the reader to access; they are neither analyzed nor mystified, simply accepted, as they would have been for the characters in the novel.

[kaitlinm_27 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

By far one of the best assigned readings I've ever had. It takes a little while to get used to the "African" words and terminology referenced but once you do it's extremely insightful and inspiring.