I was reading a review in Entertainment Weekly for the new short story collection “Say You’re One of Them” by Uwem Akpan, and it mentioned “Things Fall Apart” (1959) in a sidebar as the definitive classic African novel. I decided to dig in to that one first, and I’m glad I did. The story spans more than 45 years in the life of an African village, focusing mainly on a hardened man named Okonkwo who is determined never to show any type of weakness. As a child, he was sickened by his father’s laziness and debt, and forged himself into the embodiment of the opposite, with both admirable and deeply tragic consequences. When the white missionaries show up in the village, toward the end of the story, it feels like a violation, and I was saddened by the forced erasure of Okonkwo’s culture.
Achebe does a great job of explaining the terms, rituals, beliefs and superstitious of the villagers; I was surprised to realize that their general lifestyle was in some ways similar to that of the American Indians’ (at least, as they’re described in “Little Big Man” by Thomas Berger).
I did have some trouble keeping the names of the characters straight and had to leaf back and forth many times; certain characters show up briefly and are never heard from again, which occasionally threw me off.
Next up: “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher” by Kate Summerscale. It’s a true-crime story set in the English countryside during 1860. So far (30 pages in) it’s riveting and disturbing.
