Anthills of the Savannah Essay | Critical Essay #2

Anthills of the Savannah Critical Essay #2

Bily teaches writing and literature at Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan. In the following essay, she examines writers and writing in Anthills of the Savannah.

When Chinua Achebe published Anthills of the Savannah in 1987, it was his first new novel in more than twenty years. During that time, Nigeria had been governed by a succession of corrupt and greedy rulers, and Achebe had dedicated himself to political activism rather than to his writing. Still, he continued to consider the role of the writer in a nation under severe stress. What might be the best way for a writer to work for change? How should an African writer - or any African - balance the uses of the traditional and the modern, the local and the international, in his work? By populating Anthills of the Savannah with a variety of writers, readers, and speakers, Achebe looks at...
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