Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe has long been regarded as Africa's foremost writer. In this major new study, Jago Morrison offers a comprehensive reassessment of his work as an author, broadcaster, editor and political thinker.

With new, historically contextualised readings of all of his major works, this is the first study to view Achebe's oeuvre in its entirety, from Things Fall Apart and the early novels, through the revolutionary Ahiara Declaration – previously attributed to Emeka Ojukwu – to the revealing final works The Education of a British Educated Child and There Was a Country. Contesting previous interpretations which align Achebe too easily with this or that nationalist programme, the book reveals Achebe as a much more troubled figure than critics have habitually assumed.

Authoritative and wide-ranging, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of Achebe's work in the twenty-first century.

Jago Morrison is Senior Lecturer in English at Brunel University, UK.

1. Speaking from the Middle Ground: Contexts and Intertexts
2. Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease
3. Arrow of God
4. A Man of the People and the Biafran Writings
5. Anthills of the Savannah
6. The Balance of Stories: Critical Overview and Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index