Chinua Achebe : Narrating Africa in Fictions and History

An imaginative, narratological reading of Chinua Achebe''s novels, stories, poetry, and essays through a literary and historical framework.

Toyin Falola analyzes fictional and historical cartographies of Africa in Achebe’s literary works to offer a critical representation of Africa''s present and future. In particular, he focuses on the historical valuation of a full range of the writer''s works – novels including Things Fall Apart, but also short stories, poems, and essays – as important materials that have contributed to the political events in Nigeria and, by extension, Africa.

The raw creativity found in Achebe’s stories and his ability to tell the Nigerian story – precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial – have endeared him to many, including readers and those critical of him and his works. Chinua Achebe: Narrating Africa in Fictions and History analyzes all of the writer’s works, dwelling on the Nigerian political context upon which many, if not all, of his narratives lie. As a result, it examines methodologies of narration and ideologies that allow his works to resonate with the imagination of Africa.