The back cover of this edition of Things Fall Apart says that more than one hundred thousand copies of this novel are sold each year in the United States. The statement sounds like the boast of Okonkwo, “tall,huge, ….and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly he would use his fists.” When the book begins Okonkwo has two barns full of yams, three wives, and had fought fiercely in two inter-tribal wars.
The time is the late nineteenth century when the white man brings his strange religion and laws to Okonkwo’s Nigerian village .The characters have names difficult to pronounce, Umofia, Mbaino, Nwakbie , customs and rituals strange , bloodthirsty. A glossary in the back helps somewhat.
There is power in this tale told by an 80 year old professor of African Studies at Bard University,who brings the legends of his own Igbo heritage to us.
(first published 1959)