A Reader's Guide to Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

When Chinua Achebe first wrote Things Fall Apart, there were no models upon which to construct an African novel, since African fiction in English barely existed. At the time, African fiction in Nigeria was still largely an oral tradition in which stories were spoken and passed on from one generation to the next-which makes Achebe's work all the more impressive. Today, Things Fall Apart stands as much a piece of cultural anthropology as it is a work of fiction-a balanced living portrait of a civilization and a culture, a way of life that existed for thousands of years before the coming of colonialism. Its principal value may simply be the extent to which it involves the reader on a human level, breaking through the wall of ignorance and indifference. Book jacket.