All Things Fall

In the Ibo village of Umuofia, Okonkwo is a respected man whose power and courage are praised by all; a prosperous farmer who tends to his three wives and eight children, a wise warrior enjoying the trust of elders. His world rests on a coherent balance of rules and traditions, but from without, this seemingly immutable reality is about to be violated: first the missionaries, then the British colonists will irrevocably disrupt the existence of an entire people. A tragic novel with a clear language, All Things Fall pays homage to precolonial Africa at the dawn of its disintegration. “As long as lions do not have their own historians, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter,” says an African proverb. With this cruel fable, Chinua Achebe became one of the first lions on the continent to take up the pen.