Chinua Achebe was born in 1930 in eastern Nigeria, the son of devout Christian parents. He was baptized Albert Chinualumogu, but dropped this Victorian name when he began his studies. At the university in Nigeria, his frustrations with some of the narrow or distorted portrayals of Africa in European novels (specifically Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson) motivated him to write Things Fall Apart. Also motivating Achebe was a personal reality. After World War II, many Nigerians sought a reconciliation with their past, which they had abandoned for Christianity and the industrialization brought by Europeans to the British colonies in West Africa. Although Achebe had spoken Igbo, not English, as a child, he and his family celebrated Christian, not Igbo, festivals. His writing of Things Fall Apart when he reached manhood was Achebe's "act of atonement with [his] past, the ritual return and homage of a prodigal son" (Achebe, Morning Yet on Creation Day, p. 123).
Structure of a nineteenth-century Igbo community. Until the late nineteenth century, the Igbo dwelled in small independent villages linked to one another by trade but not by politics.
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