Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He has published novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books. His volume of poetry Christmas in Biafra was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, Arrow of God won the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize. Things Fall Apart, Achebe’s masterpiece, has been published in fifty different languages and has sold more than ten million copies internationally since its first publication in 1958. Achebe is the recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award, Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize. He died in March 2013.
"Foreign Policy Must Read 2012" by Books from Global Thinkers
“Chinua Achebe’s history of Biafra is a meditation on the condition
of freedom. It has the tense narrative grip of the best fiction. It
is also a revelatory entry into the intimate character of the
writer’s brilliant mind and bold spirit. Achebe has created here a
new genre of literature in which politico-historical evidence, the
power of story-telling, and revelations from the depths of the
human subconscious are one. The event of a new work by Chinua
Achebe is always extraordinary; this one exceeds all
expectation.”—Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize in
Literature“A fascinating and gripping memoir.” —The Wall Street
Journal“There Was a Country ought to be essential reading…an
eclectic range of insights and fascinating anecdotes.”—Financial
Times“Achebe writes in a characteristically modest fashion…Like
much of Achebe’s other work, this book about the progress of war
and the presence of violence has a universal quality. In a world
where sectarian hatreds augmented by political mediocrity have
fractured Syria and threaten to bring Israel and Iran to blows,
There Was a Country is a valuable account of how the suffering
caused by war is both unnecessary and formative.”—Newsweek
"Memoir and history are brought together by a master
storyteller."
—The Guardian
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