JAY RUUD’S “100 ALL-TIME BEST BOOKS TO LOVE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE”
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s acclaimed 1958 novel Things Fall Apart is alphabetically first on my list of Best Books to Love in English. It was the first book by a native African writer to receive worldwide fame, and a staple of post-colonial literature. It is on the list of Time Magazine’s “100 best English-language novels published since 1923” (2005); Penguin Publishing’s list of “100 Must-Read Classics” (2022); The Observer’s list of “The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time” (2003); and the “Top 100 works of World Literature,” sponsored by the Norwegian Nobel Institute” (2002).
Achebe’s novel follows the life of Okonkwo, an Igbo man belonging to the fictional Nigerian clan of Umuofia. He’s a man of some stature in his community, the local wrestling champion and a self-made respected man of some wealth in his village. Motivated by the desire to rise above the legacy of his own father, who had left a reputation for weakness and unpaid debts, Okonkwo is obsessed with his image of masculinity and his determination never to show weakness. But his obsessions lead to tragic consequences in the novel.
The book is in three parts: The first introduces Okonkwo, his family, and the society of the Igbo. In the second part, Okonkwo is forced into exile to atone for accidentally killing a fellow tribesman. While he is away, white Christian missionaries infiltrate his village and spread their new religion, which his son Nwoye accepts. In part three, Okonkwo runs afoul of the new colonial government and tragedy results.
Achebe’s novel utilizes traditional Western literary patterns as well as the English language, and is in many ways a response to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness while borrowing its title from a poem by William Butler Yeats. But Achebe subverts western colonization by showing the pre-colonial culture of the Igbo as a complex, well-structured society, perfectly competent at governing itself, and not as a tribe of savages in need or civilizing by western powers. And it was the first of its kind to show the ugly face of colonialism to the colonial powers in their own language. And that’s why it belongs on this list.