Book Rec of the Day 2/26/2007

YOU’VE NEVER READ CHINUA ACHEBE?

Chinua Achebe’s first novel is a triumph that works on several levels, but first and foremost it is a good story, well told. It’s a portrait of a flawed man who struggles to redeem himself in the eyes of his family and his neighbors. Simmering just beneath the surface, it is a story of Nigeria—the country’s suffering under colonialism and its attempts to reconstruct itself. Achebe is, in the words of fellow writer Margaret Atwood, “a magical writer—one of the greatest of the twentieth century.”

THINGS FALL APART, by Chinua Achebe (1958; Anchor, 1994)