Morrison, Anna. "Teaching THINGS FALL APART." MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE April 23, 2008.

The complaints began the moment I started passing out copies of the novel Things Fall Apart to the 17 and 18-year-olds of my English IV classroom. "What this book is?" moaned LaJohn, a big football player who always nabs a seat in the back of the room. J.T. was even more pointed when he turned to Tierra, shook his book in the air and said, "Man, she ain't gonna make us read this whole book!" As a public-school teacher in the Mississippi Delta, I have become accustomed to this sort of aversion towards literature. My students are not comfortable readers. They have been raised almost entirely on television and the Internet; very few have access to books at home. The majority of the teachers in our school system use the textbook exclusively, so many students will finish high school having read only one or two books in total. With this in mind, I try to teach plot-driven stories that operate on a fairly basic reading level, without denying depth of content. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe weaves his tale of Nigeria in the 1800s with beautifully simple language. He enriches his descriptions with poetic references to the Ibo culture, filling the pages with their proverbs and natural metaphors. My slower readers would be able to keep up, while the more advanced might find some of the nuance in the poetry. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/node/973.

Franklin, Ruth. "After Empire: Chinua Achebe and the Great African Novel." NEW YORKER May 26, 2008.

In the course of a writing life that has included five novels, collections of short stories and poetry, and numerous essays and lectures, Achebe has consistently argued for the right of Africans to tell their own story in their own way, and has attacked the representations of European writers. But he also did not reject European influence entirely, choosing to write not in his native Igbo but in English, a language that, as he once said, “history has forced down our throat.” In a country with several major languages and more than five hundred smaller ones, establishing a lingua franca was a practical and political necessity. For Achebe, it was also an artistic necessity—a way to give expression to the clash of civilizations that is his enduring theme. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/05/26/080526crbo_books_franklin.

Thompson, Bob. "Things Fall into Place." WASHINGTON POST March 9, 2008.

In a few days Achebe will travel 110 miles down the Hudson to Town Hall in Manhattan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Things Fall Apart. Toni Morrison will speak, as will, among others, his fellow Nigerian-born writers Chris Abani and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Abani will remind the packed house that they've come together "because we are in awe of the way in which one human being's imagination can intervene in all our lives." But right now, the owner of that life-shaping imagination is trying to explain that he is not entirely certain just how Things Fall Apart came into the world. "It's a little mysterious in some ways," he says. The book "seized me, and almost wrote me. I'm not quite sure I wrote it." . . . The whole article is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030700987.html?sub=new.

Cooper, Carol. "Chinua Achebe's THINGS FALL APART Turns 50 This Year [Interview]." VILLAGE VOICE February 19, 2008.

Although Achebe has been internationally famous since 1958, when his first novel, Things Fall Apart, was published by London's Heinemann Press, subsequent decades have only expanded his impressive résumé. Things Fall Apart wasn't the first African novel written in English, but it remains one of the most significant and best known. Two years before Britain granted Nigeria its independence, Achebe's fictionalized critique of cultural imperialism did for colonialism what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for American slavery. A commemorative edition arrives this month from Vintage/Anchor to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Achebe's debut and his winning of the 2007 Man Booker International Prize, which honored his entire body of published work—his novels, critical essays, poetry, short stories, children's books, and anthologies of African short fiction. . . . Read the rest of the interview here: http://www.villagevoice.com/arts/0808,302331,302331,27.html.

Timberg, Scott. "At 50, Achebe Novel Looks Immortal." LOS ANGELES TIMES February 24, 2008.

About a half-century ago, a shy young Nigerian man, who had grown up reading Dickens and Pilgrim's Progress, put his handwritten novel in the mail to a typing service in London. The manuscript sat untouched for months, until a colleague rescued it during a visit to Britain. These pages, after several rejections, later found their way to a sympathetic publisher.The book eventually released, Things Fall Apart, became a critical hit in Britain as well as the first African novel to break through to the English-speaking world. Not only did it sell -- nearly 10 million copies, in 50 languages -- this slim, understated volume became the one African novel to break, unambiguously, into the often impenetrable Western canon. The book continues to live: High school kids and college students read it for class, while African novelists read it to pursue its ideas and themes. To literary scholar John Marx of UC Davis, it's "the first novel of the African literary canon, to be sure, but also a key text in the body of writing one needs to know to be literate. I'd say that's the case not only in the English-speaking world but just about everywhere". . . . Read the rest here: http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-things24feb24,0,2262817.story.

Monaghan, Peter. "Coming Together: on the 50th Anniversary of Achebe's THINGS FALL APART." CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION February 8, 2008.

Fifty years after he published Things Fall Apart, his first novel, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe recalls having modest hopes for the book. At the time, he was a young university graduate who had found a job at the Nigerian Broadcasting Company, in Lagos. "I was alone in my room, scribbling away, and if nobody had paid any attention at all to me, I wouldn't have been terribly surprised," Achebe recalls with a quiet chuckle, here in his home on the campus of Bard College. Yet the towering achievement of Things Fall Apart has been to become arguably the most influential work of fiction by an African writer. Since William Heinemann Ltd. first issued it in London, the novel has sold about 11 million copies in some 50 countries and as many languages. (This month Anchor Books will issue a 50th-aniversary edition.) In the United States, in an era of multiculturalism, it has become a fixture on college and high-school reading lists — for Americans, the quintessential novel about Africa. The influential critic Harold Bloom included it in 1994 in his selection of the canonical works of world literature, along with two of Achebe's later novels dealing with Nigeria's transition through colonization to troubled independent nationhood, No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God. . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=wwnsjpymmr1tl2jn03ghjn0t0x6s5sg2.

CFP: "THINGS FALL APART at 50," Institute of English Studies, University of London, October 10-11, 2008.

The publication of Chinua Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958 marked the beginning of a new era in African writing in English. It was an inspiration for writers and readers not only on the African continent but throughout the world. Fifty years later, and as part of a series of worldwide events instigated by the Achebe Foundation in New York, this conference seeks to revisit that novel and assess its significance then and now. Speakers will include those involved in publishing and republishing the novel, writers, readers, artists, and critics from Africa, Europe, the UK, and the United States. Among the writers who have agreed to take part are Doris Lessing, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Elleke Boehmer, and Abdulrazak Gurnah. The conference will culminate with a dialogue between Chinua Achebe and the eminent Princeton scholar Simon Gikandi. Proposals for papers or panels are invited on topics such as 'Reading Things Fall Apart'; 'Teaching Things Fall Apart'; ' African literature after Things Fall Apart'; ' Reconsidering Things Fall Apart'; 'Publishing and Marketing Things Fall Apart'; ' Things Fall Apart outside Africa'. Proposals for 20 minute papers or for panels should be sent to Professor Lyn Innes by email (c.l.innes@kent.ac.uk) or post (School of English, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NX, UK), no later than March 1st, 2008. Visit the conference website here: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2008/Achebe/index.htm.