Things Fall Apart: A Novel

This 1959 African novel is one of those small powerful books that held me captive until I finished reading it. It didn't take long. It is only 209 pages. But I was completely won over from the first page and surprised that I had never heard of it before. The author was born in Nigeria in 1930 and is currently a college professor at Bard College in upstate New York. This book is required reading in many college courses today and considered a classic. Most of the book deals with Nigerian tribal life both before and after the coming of the missionaries. We first meet Okonkwo, a well respected tribal member, in his prime. He has three wives and several children and his plot of land is well tended and produces many yams. The beliefs in their spirits are very real and I found myself seeing their world through their eyes. I related to each of the people, especially Okonkwo, whose life was shaped by the shame of his father, and also his wife who bore ten children and had only one child who lived. Some of the customs were indeed strange, and sometimes they were cruel. Life was certainly not idyllic. There was war. There was murder. And then, because of an accident, Okonkwo himself was banned from his tribe for seven years. But there was social cohesion and a worldview that suited the way of life of the people. The first three-quarters of the book were set in this very unique Nigerian community who had never seen a white man. And then the missionaries came. Things changed. And because the author had so fully created the tribal world, I personally felt the impact of the missionaries on the community through the eyes of the people, which was mostly that of confusion as their way of life was turned inside out. This is a fine book. I loved every page and was sorry to see it end.

Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a foundational work in modern African literature, and for good reason. The novel captures precolonial Igbo society with rare authenticity, weaving local language and customs into English prose without erasing cultural identity. I appreciated the way Achebe chose to preserve Igbo words, rituals, and traditions within the text, offering readers not only a story but also a cultural immersion that resists the flattening lens of colonial narratives. The novel’s greatest strength lies in this cultural preservation, though at times the storytelling feels weighed down by repetition. Several passages repeat similar ideas about strength, masculinity, and tradition, making them redundant rather than reinforcing. This mirrors the protagonist, Okonkwo, a deeply flawed man. His harshness, pride, and violent tendencies make him difficult to sympathize with, yet his role as a symbol of resistance to change and fear of weakness is central to the novel’s moral tension. The arrival of the Christian missionaries and the colonial administration marks a critical turning point. Achebe portrays the disruption with nuance, neither vilifying nor idealizing the Christians, but showing how their presence fractured communities and redefined power. The ending, which contrasts the tragic collapse of Okonkwo with the cold dismissal of his life by a colonial official, is chilling. It strips the protagonist of dignity and reduces an entire culture’s upheaval to a footnote, exposing the violence of cultural erasure. Despite some narrative redundancy and a protagonist who is far from likable, Things Fall Apart remains powerful, layered, and important. Its final pages echo long after the book is closed, reminding readers of both the fragility of tradition and the arrogance of colonial judgment. For these reasons, I give it four stars.

Great book. A must read

This is not so much a review of the book as it is a brief commentary of its personal and broader relevance. As a Nigerian-American, I can honestly say that Things Fall Apart is one of the most important books I've ever read. I read it in secondary school in Nigeria 30 years ago and most of it was lost on me because we were forced to read, memorize, and regurgitate its contents to pass exams. We did not have much have a chance to extract and discuss the WEALTH of knowledge that Chinua Achebe unfurls in this book. Fast-forward to last week in the US when something kept telling me to order another copy (I've lived in a few countries, including Nigeria, and always feel compelled to buy this book anywhere I live but never find time to read it). So, I ordered yet another hard copy and then saw Amazon's Kindle deal while the first copy was in transit in the post. It was a no-brainer -- the Kindle version would solve my traveling woes! Moreover, I devoured it in 3 days! Then I discussed certain passages with my parents whose grandparents would have been Okonkwo's peers and this precipitated priceless family discussions, taking my parents back to their respective childhoods. Having been born in the US, I can count the number of times that we've tried to have similar discussions that ended up falling flat. I believe my re-reading of Achebe's book, plus my mother's grand decision to transplant me from the US and enroll me in a Nigerian secondary school decades ago, FINALLY helped us share and construct parts of our family's historical story's center that had never really had the chance to come together -- not to talk of fall apart. The novel also elicited compassion from me that gets buried (far) beneath the frustration at present-day Nigeria, which I've recently lived in and visit often. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe describes this functional society -- sure, without the technological advances of iron horses and Western education -- but functional enough to maintain law and order, as well as family and community (kinship) structures. My parents say that they remember some of those days and now I understand the heartbreak and ambivalence they must feel when they look at Nigeria today. I also finished the book with more compassion towards pre-colonial worshippers of traditional or cultural gods. Achebe cleverly shows that it wasn't much different from Christianity other than the multiplicity of mediator gods and the exclusion of certain groups and the sad, unfortunate mistreatment of twins. (My parents have a family friend who was an only child because his mother had given birth to FOUR sets of twins -- all of whom were you-know-what). As a Christian, I can easily rattle off the vast differences but sometimes it's helpful to look at similarities, so you can understand where people are coming from and why they see things the way they do, and therefore do the things they do. The Igbos were just one ethnic groups in Nigeria that had to make decisions and adjustments to literally abandon who they were. Never mind how many other groups had to do the same across the entire country and continent! Finally, I was struck by how certain elements of this 60 year-old novel foreshadows aspects of present-day Nigeria. In particular, the part about the colonial government messengers and 250 cowries had me howling out loud! Obviously, I don't want to give it away, so please feel free to share your thoughts on this aspect after you've read the book! While I understand Chimamanda Adichie's warning not to heed to the narrative of a single story, Things Fall Apart is one story that I am proud to say represents an aspect of my heritage superbly. Achebe should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature because of the understanding Things Fall Apart presumably fostered between colonized peoples and their colonizers, between colonized people in general, and between people around the world in a much broader sense -- and still does. In short: I simply adore this book and hope you do, too!

The Nigerian words & names were hard to follow so it took me longer than usual to finish the book. It was a decent story, but I don’t understand what it is considered a “classic”.

Good book must read. I bought it in 2017 now it's 2025 and the book is still in pristine condition. Thanks to seller.

Achebe does what good writers do: tells the truth, as honestly and often painfully as necessary. He paints a picture of pre-colonial Nigerian society that is at once beautiful and terrible, avoiding the rubber-stamped anti-colonial narrative of more modern works. In doing this he establishes trust with the reader and identification with the characters he creates. They become, living, breathing people, with their flaws and humanity intact, not cardboard cutouts, puppets to play out whatever political agenda the author may ham-handedly try to enact because it's currently in fashion.

Ein wirklich starker Roman, zurecht ein absoluter Klassiker der postkolonialen afrikanischen Literatur!

I really like this novel. It shows a different perspective about colonization in the eyes of the colonized.

Good.