Nigerian writer (1930-2013)
It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.
CHINUA ACHEBE
interview, Afrique, 1962
A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Arrow of God
No Madonna and Child could touch
Her tenderness for a son
She soon would have to forget....
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps
Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there
Had long ceased to care, but not this one:
She held a ghost-smile between her teeth,
And in her eyes the memory
Of a mother's pride...
CHINUA ACHEBE
"A Mother in a Refugee Camp", Collected Poems
We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
CHINUA ACHEBE
The Education of a British-Protected Child
The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.
CHINUA ACHEBE
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
Only half-wits can stumble into such enormities.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
The reality of today, different as it is from the reality of my society one hundred years ago, is and can be important if we have the energy and the inclination to challenge it, to go out and engage with its peculiarities, with the things that we do not understand. The real danger is the tendency to retreat into the obvious, the tendency to be frightened by the richness of the world and to clutch what we always have understood.
CHINUA ACHEBE
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
Death is tolerable only when it leads again to life.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Collected Poems
When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.
CHINUA ACHEBE
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
But oh what beauty! What speed!
A chariot of night in panic flight
From Our Royal Proclamation of the rites
Of day! And riding out Our procession
Of fantasy We slaked an ancient
Vestigial greed shriveled by ages of dormancy
Till the eyes exhausted by glorious pageantries
Returned to rest on that puny
Legend of the life-jacket stowed away
Of all places under my seat.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Collected Poems
My books have done extremely well, I know. But I don't honestly feel much different from when I began to write. I still think we have a long way to go. I suppose my name means more in Nigeria today than it did five years ago. But I feel the job that literature should do in our community has not even started. It's not yet part of the life of the nation. We are still at the beginning. It's a big beginning, because now we are catching the next generation in the schools. When I was their age, I had nothing to read that had any relevance to my own environment.
CHINUA ACHEBE
interview, Sunday Nation, Jan. 15, 1967
The books are, in fact, the story of the country of my birth, Ogidi, in eastern Nigeria. In the first, I tell of the village traditions and the hopes and fears of all the inhabitants at the time when the first contacts with Europeans are taking place. In the second book, which is in fact the third of the trilogy, the story is about my generation. In the missing book, the story will be about my father's generation, those who were Christianized. The theme of it will be the conflict of the head priest with the rest of the village during the 1920's. But I can't write it yet, because I haven't yet got far enough back into the problems of that period. It is too easy to discredit the former generation. In reality, that generation is very important and I must still pay attention to it.
CHINUA ACHEBE
interview, Afrique, 1962
I was brought up in a village where the old ways were still active and alive, so I could see the remains of our tradition actually operating. At the same time I brought a certain amount of detachment to it too, because my father was a Christian missionary, and we were not fully part of the "heathen" life of the village. It was divided into the people of the Church and the people of the "world." I think it was easier for me to observe. Many of my contemporaries who went to school with me and came from heathen families ask me today: "How did you manage to know all these things?" You see, for them these old ways were just part of life. I could look at them from a certain distance, and I was struck by them.
CHINUA ACHEBE
interview, Sunday Nation, Jan. 15, 1967
A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep--her face
turned to the wall!
CHINUA ACHEBE
Attento, Soul Brother!
She pouted her lips like a gun in my face.
CHINUA ACHEBE
"Misunderstanding", Collected Poems
Now I think I know why gods
Are so partial to heights--to mountain
Tops and spires, to proud iroko trees
And thorn-guarded holy bombax,
Why petty household divinities
Will sooner perch on a rude board
Strung precariously from brittle rafters
Of a thatched roof
than sit squarely
On safe earth.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Collected Poems