Chinua Achebe

All Things Fall Apart is a fantastic book. To write like Achebe is very difficult.

The book is part of a Trilogy, but it stands on its own. It examines, quite brutally, the effect of Christian Missionary activity in Nigeria, and how it contributed to the destruction of traditional ways of life and culture. He does not paint the traditional ways as being superior or morally better and gives some moving examples of life as it was - for example, the killing of a boy by the hero, who was the son of a defeated enemy, and who grew up to consider the hero as his Father. But the insidious and racist scorn directed at the old ways by the Missionaries and then their proxies in the village are movingly described with an economy of words. The story ends in a jarring way, with the suicide of the hero. Very profound, for a slim book, and a must-read. The picture is from http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/achebe/achebeov.html