CHINUA ACHEBE''S LIFE :
He was born in Ogidi, in Eastern Nigeria on the 16th of November,1930 and was the 5th of the six children of Isaiah Ohafor Achebe; one of the early Ibo converts to Christianity;who was evangelist and teacher in the Church Missionary Society''s Village School .Chinua athended his father''s school and having started to learn English at about the age of 8, went on to Govermnent College,Umuabia, in 1944.
In 1945,he entered
university college,Ibadan -at that time in special relationship with the university of London - with a scholarship to study medicine.After a year , he switched to literature and was one of Ibadan''s first graduates in 1953.At that time, the syllabus which would have been followed by an undergraduate in Britain,and one advantage of this,from the point of view of Achebe as a novelist, was that he was immediately introduced to the mainstream of the English novel and to its close critical study.In particular, he was introduced to the complex and carefully constructed masterpieces of JOSEPH CONARD(1857-1924),the Polish Author who chose to write his novels in English and to a range of English writers who had written about Africa from the outside.In addition,he was awakened to the power of fiction for expressing the most profond ideas of human experince and for giving voice to the deepest feelings of the individual human spirit.At the same time , his interest in the history of Nigeria had grown, so it is not surprising that when he turned to storytelling, he should turn as one not only fully informed in the analysis of English fiction but also as one determined to express through this means the spirit of his
people and write about Africa from the inside.
After teaching for a few months, he joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1954 as a Talks Producer and rose , by way of being Head of the Talks Section in 1957 then Controller in Eastern Region in 1959 to become Director of External Services in 1961.His job took him on long journeys about Nigeria and ,as he drove, his mind was busy reviewing the history and life of his people and casting this mass of unique material in the classical fictional moulds he had studied at university.This resulted in 1958, in the publication of his first novel,THINGS FALL APART.It was an immediate success and won for him the Margaret Wrong Prize.NO LONGER AT EASE was published in 1960 and won the Nigerian National Trophy.ARROW OF GOD came out in 1964 and made him the first recipient of the New Statesman Jock Campbell Award , and his fourth, and so far his last novel, A MAN OF THE PEOPLE , appeared in 1966.
With the MASACRE OF THE IBOS IN NIGERIA IN 1966 and the begining of the Nigerian troubles,he resigned from the Broadcasting Corporatio and moved back to Eastern Nigeria.There , when the region declared itself independent under the name of Biafra , he threw in his lot with his fellow-Ibos during the civil war.Since the war, he has concentrated on rebuilding the university of Nigeria,Nssuka,where he now teaches, but he taught for two years in the United States , at the university of Massachusetts in Amherst and at the university of Connecticut.It is clear to those who know him that the Biafran conflict and its experiences then have had a profond effect on ACHEBE ? and it seems reasonable to guess that ultimately these will show in a fifth novel;GIRLS AT WAR in 1971, a collection of short stories and some of the poems in BEWARE SOUL BROTHER in 1972 concern the war as do several of the essays in his most recent collection MORNING YET ON CREATION DAY in 1975.
As will be apparent to anyone who reads his novels,ACHEBE sets great importance on family life and relationships;it is clear that he had a particularly and warm upbringing himself and he is most concerned to create the same atmosphere for his own children.It is not surprising,therefore, that one of his works(albait not very well known to critics)has been CHIKE AND THE RIVER (1966); an adventure story for children.
As well as prizes forr his books,ACHEBE has received many honours and they have often bought with them the possibility for travelling widely above the world.He gained a Rockefeller Grant in 1960 and Unex Travel Award in 1963.In 1974,he was awarded a fellowship of the Modern Languages Association of America and Homorary Doctorrates in both the universities of Stirling and Southhampton;and in 1975,he was made the second recipient of the Scotish Arts Council''s Neil Gunn Fellowship.
This is the son of a small Nigerian village, grandson of a simple Igbo tradesman.