“I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was treated very badly with something that was called genocide in those days.”

Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic

Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic, and a central figure in modern African literature. He is best known for Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, which became a landmark novel in African writing. Achebe’s fiction helped define a modern African literary tradition, especially through Things Fall Apart and the later novels No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God, which together form the African Trilogy. He also wrote A Man of the People and Anthills of the Savannah. His work is closely associated with the literary and cultural questions of African life, history, and colonial disruption.