A Study Guide for Chinua Achebe's "Civil Peace"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Chinua Achebe's "Civil Peace," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535820844

Book preview

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Civil Peace

Chinua Achebe

1971

Introduction

One of Africa’s foremost contemporary authors and spokespeople, Chinua Achebe, has always taken as a primary concern understanding and accurately depicting the African people. In 1964, he wrote that the writer’s duty "is to explore in depth the human condition." In his pre-civil war novels, Achebe focused on the culture of his people and their emergence from colonial powers. However, with the outbreak of the Nigerian civil war, Achebe embraced the revolutionary spirit. Not only did he serve as a diplomat, bringing eastern Nigeria’s message overseas, and write radio programs about the cause, he also found himself unable to work on long fictional works during this period. Even two years after the war ended, he felt no urge to work on a novel. He did, however, write three short stories concerning the civil war, all of which were collected in the short fiction volume, Girls at War and Other