Things Fall Apart (Macmillan Reader) by Chinua Achebe, John Davey Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Things Fall Apart (Macmillan Reader)
Book Review: A must read
Summary: 5 Stars
Chinua Achebe's THINGS FALL APART is like what HEART OF DARKNESS would have been if told through the eyes of an African. The book immerses the reader into the lives of an African village and soon one is lost in the world Achebe created. When the first "white man" arrives, you feel the same shock, bewilderment, and later hatred that their arrival brings. It's like an earthquake that destroys everything that you know and love.
This novel perfectly shows the disastrous effects of colonization and most readers will empathize with the struggles of the natives. This book should be required reading for everyone that agrees with invading another country to spread religion, democracy, values, or whatever else it believes it's doing in the name of righteousness
Book Review: Quintessential Achebe
Summary: 5 Stars
A most memorable book, Okonkwo looms large, but as a tragic figure is very human; small in the temporal context. His world is rapidly changing, christians have taken hold, and the gods seem to have gone silent. Indeed the 'pacification' of his village was thorough in this sense as it somehow strikes at the essence of their existence seemingly usurping it. The ghost of Okonkwo from this encounter still haunts the african continent; the tensions between the lure of modernisation and tradition. Achebe deals brilliantly with african space, connecting the past with the present, ensuring that precolonial space is documented for reference.
It is a most enjoyable read, one that must be revisited over and over again.
Book Review: Please, please read this. You deserve it!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book will move you. I guarantee it. 100%. It will live with you for ever. I also guarantee that. 100%. If a book ever can have such a guarantee attached to it, then this is the one. How about another one: You will not be able to put this book down.
Why? Well, how about the slow unravelling of a people; the tragic desperation of the protagonist to preserve what has always been; and what about his frustration as, despite his strength and standing, he is quite unable to preseve his people's traditions against the onslaught of a couple of English missionaries?
And if that doesn't leave an indelible mark on you, the unashamed portrayal of the traditional practices of the local populace will. Indeed, the greatest strength of this book is that it doesn't idealise the traditional, neither does it villify the new. It just lays the facts of empire and all the tragedy of empire and the human condition before the reader and says, "This is how it was and this is how it is."
Book Review: The best book. Ever!
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a fervent reader of books and I have to say this is the best book ever written.
I read this when I was about 8 or 9, and 20 years later I have never tired of reading this.
Good work! Pure genius.
Book Review: The coming to end of an era - and the beginning of a new.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a very simply written book, not burdened by elaborate language or symbolic construction. It is told in a manner similar to that which its characters use to tell their stories to each other.
Fast paced, as is apt to a documentation of the changing of ages: when British colonialists cement their rule on South Eastern Nigeria. And in that time, we are told the story of a man, Okonkwo, of the old times - and the Ibo people who live there. A traditionalist, a warrior, a proud (and complicated) man. The book is as much about him, and those who surround him, as anything. Very accurate, and sensitive, never overdramatic. The rhythm of the book is masterful; exchanging intensity for sensitivity for joy, then fear with engaging momentum. An enthralling and humane snapshot from the history of the Ibo.
(By the by, some readers may be interested in some of the insights into Ibo custom provided by the book. Why is the snake, of all creatures, identified with the sea, and water? Why are the women not allowed inside the hut, in which the powerful spirits of the village reside, though it is women who paint its outside with patterns at regular intervals? Why is the name "The Mother is Supreme" so popular - when men are always in dominant positions? Those interested in answers to these questions, and similar others, would do well to check out the anthroplogical tome Blood Relations by Chris Knight.)