Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
I think what’s so fantastic about this book is that it’s sort of portentous, if that’s the right word, in that it captures that moment between the end of colonisation and independence and the inevitable crushing of Africa’s dreams. I can’t remember exactly when it was written, but it was very early on in the process. It sounds really pessimistic – I mean, it’s a beautifully written book, but it’s the way in which the fate takes over. There was an endemic inevitability about things falling apart, almost through nobody’s fault.
So, your first book is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. It’s probably the best-known African novel – it’s even on the GCSE English syllabus here.
I think what’s so fantastic about it is that it’s sort of portentous, if that’s the right word, in that it captures that moment between the end of colonisation and independence, and the inevitable crushing of Africa’s dreams. I can’t remember exactly when it was written, but it was very early on in the process. It sounds really pessimistic – I mean, it’s a beautifully written book, but it’s the way in which the fate takes over. There was an endemic inevitability about things falling apart, almost through nobody’s fault. And there are people nobly fighting against that. It sounds like a terribly pessimistic, self-flagellating book about how Africa’s independence came too soon. In some ways it is, but it’s also about the nobility of individuals trying to stop things falling apart. I read it when I was quite young and I didn’t know what a parlous state Africa was really in, and this gave me a historical context for it all.
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War correspondent Sam Kiley is the author of Desperate Glory: At War in Helmand with Britain’s 16 Air Assault Brigade. Kenyan-born, he was educated in England and he has now covered 30 conflicts in more than 20 countries. Married with two children, he lives in rural Suffolk.
What about your final book, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
It almost feels like a cliché to say that this is one of my favourite books. But there is no way you can escape this book. It is such a part of African literature. It is an inescapable classic. It is a brilliant feat of storytelling, the economy of it, the brevity, the imagery, the ear he has for the traditional language.
This is the story of Okonkwo, one of the chiefs in the village who rose from poverty and becomes one of the leading figures. He is a leader and local wrestling champion in Umuofia, a fictional group of nine villages in Nigeria, inhabited by the Igbos. He tries to stick to the tradition that he knows and is hopeless when confronted with the modern. He cannot wrap his mind around change in the form of the British and the missionaries and ultimately he is destroyed by that. Even though it is a tragic story you are still captivated by it.
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Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in 1967. His first novel, Waiting for an Angel, won the Caine Prize in 2001. In 2002 he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. His writing has won many prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003. In 2005-2006 he was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York. He is contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review and in 2006 co-edited the British Council’s anthology, New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time was published in February 2007 and his latest novel, Oil on Water, is out soon. He currently teaches creative writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and children. He says Nigeria has a tradition of storytelling. ‘Before we were over taken by TV and video games it was very much part of our culture to tell stories. And this tradition still persists on the streets… you will see people spend hours just talking to each other!’
