| Things Fall Apart: A Novel | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 536 reviews)
Sales Rank: 205
Category: Book
Author: Chinua Achebe
Publisher: Anchor
Studio: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Label: Anchor
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0385474547
Dewey Decimal Number: 823
EAN: 9780385474542
ASIN: 0385474547
Publication Date: September 1994
Release Date: September 1, 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This is Chinua Achebe's classic novel, with more than two million copies sold since its first U.S. publication in 1969. Combining a richly African story with the author's keen awareness of the qualities common to all humanity, Achebe here shows that he is "gloriously gifted, with the magic of an ebullient, generous, great talent." -- Nadine Gordimer
Amazon.com Review
One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy: Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him. Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. --Alix Wilber
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| Customer Reviews: Read 531 more reviews...
 things fall apart January 5, 2009
this book was awesome. it was a required reading for my world history 2 class my freshman year of college. although i am an avid reader, i probably would have never read the book on my own had dr barnes not required it for the course. if you are a lover of historically accurate books, this book is for you!
 Yam Yam Yam Yam January 5, 2009
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
!!!Spoiler Alert!!!
Yam yam yam yam, beat my wife, yam yam yam yam, kill whitey, yam yam yam yam, beat my kids, yam yammity yam.
There, you have now read things fall apart. My version costs less and takes much less time as well.
Seriously though, we read this in high school and it is one of the worst books I have ever had the misfortune of reading.
Good Read November 27, 2008
I read this book for the first time in high school I loved it. I found it to be detailed and I felt like I was in the village and I knew the people. The ending is extremely sad.
 Erm.... September 28, 2008
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
I absolutely HATED reading this book. I respect it as a very popular piece of literature, but in truth I spent more time sounding out all of the names in this then actually reading it!
Things Fall Apart September 27, 2008
It's rare to find a book that can be at once so severe and so touching. This is a fantastic and emotionally charged book of a view of Africa that is not always revealed to the world in such a way in suh honest color. While Achebe clearly cares for the culture, he is not afraid to hide what is true about it. The result is a deeply moving look into the way of people and how they relate themselves to the rest of world as it changes.
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