Things Fall Apart ★★★★☆

Things Fall Apart (Click Here To Buy)

★★★★☆

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

This book is about Okonkwo and his family, who live in the Umuofia villiage, and is set when colonialism was first arriving in Nigeria.

I read this on recommendation from @blessingreads and I happened across this copy in a Little Free Library.

Okonkwo is a man who tends towards violence and the course of his life is continuously dictated by the consequences of his violent actions. Despite the at times extreme violence, beatings, and murder that occurs in the story, the narration is very neutral. This violence is balanced within the community through tradition and ritual. Achebe fills the story with African proverbs, ceremonies, and daily life of Ibo people. It was the proverb/origin stories throughout the book that I enjoyed most.

In the second section of the book, white missionaries arrive in the village and the story shifts, becoming a struggle between tradition and change. Some Igbo join while others contemplate this new religion, trying to figure out how to interact with this change, all while vehemently holding on to their traditional values. As things fall apart, a battle rages within Okonkwo, and leads to the book’s fateful ending, which I will not soon forget.

Although this story is fiction, it is often considered historical fiction, as events such as these happened during the colonial conquest of Nigeria.

Achebe’s No Longer At Ease was also in the Little Free Library, so expect to see that review sometime this year.

If you liked Things Fall Apart, I also recommend The Death of Vivek Oji by Awaeke Emezi, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, and Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Happy reading!

Ms.Bjork