Who Wrote Things Fall Apart, When, Where Is It Set, and Where Does the Title Come From?
A Nigerian answer to a century of books about Africa written by outsiders
Things Fall Apart was written by Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian author, and published in London in 1958 by Heinemann. It is set in the fictional Igbo village of Umuofia, in what is now southeastern Nigeria, in the late 1800s, just as European colonizers arrive.
The title comes from a 1919 poem by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, which describes a world in which things fall apart and the centre can no longer hold.
Things Fall Apart in brief
| Fact | Answer |
|---|---|
| Author | Chinua Achebe (1930 to 2013) |
| Published | 1958, Heinemann, London |
| Length | About 210 pages; about 50,000 words; 25 chapters in 3 parts |
| Setting | Umuofia, a group of nine Igbo villages, and Mbanta |
| Time | The 1890s |
| Title from | A 1919 poem by W. B. Yeats |
| Followed by | No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964) |
| Sales | More than 20 million copies, in over 50 languages |
Who was Chinua Achebe?
Chinua Achebe was born in 1930 in Ogidi, an Igbo town in southeastern Nigeria, and studied at University College, Ibadan. He worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation while writing Things Fall Apart, his first novel. He later became one of Africa's most influential writers and teachers, won the Man Booker International Prize in 2007 and spent his last years teaching in the United States. He died in 2013.
↑ Back to the topWhy did Achebe write Things Fall Apart?
Achebe said he decided to become a writer after reading novels by European authors, such as Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, that showed Africans as people without history or culture. He wanted to tell the story from the inside: a complex, ordered society with its own laws, arts, debates and flaws, which was then broken by colonial rule.
↑ Back to the topWhere does the title come from?
The title is taken from a famous 1919 poem by W. B. Yeats, written after the First World War, which describes a world spinning out of control as old order collapses. Achebe opens the novel with the poem's first lines. It fits twice over: Okonkwo's life falls apart, and so does the whole way of life of Umuofia once the colonizers arrive.
↑ Back to the topWhere and when is it set?
Umuofia is a fictional group of nine villages on the lower Niger, based on the Igbo communities Achebe's own family came from. The first part shows daily life, farming, festivals, wrestling, justice and family. The second follows Okonkwo's exile in his mother's village, Mbanta. The third, set in the 1890s, shows the arrival of the newcomers and British colonial government.
↑ Back to the topWhat came after?
Achebe continued the story of colonial Nigeria in No Longer at Ease, about Okonkwo's grandson Obi, a young civil servant in Lagos in the 1950s, and in Arrow of God, set in the 1920s. Together the three books are often called the African Trilogy. Things Fall Apart is the most widely read African novel in the world.
↑ Back to the topMore about Things Fall Apart
Books Like Things Fall Apart
Madame BovaryGustave Flaubert
North and SouthElizabeth Gaskell
The Scarlet LetterNathaniel Hawthorne
Oliver TwistCharles Dickens
Bonjour TristesseFrançoise Sagan
Great ExpectationsCharles Dickens
Ethan FromeEdith Wharton
Anna KareninaLeo TolstoyThis guide discusses the whole plot, including the ending.