Chinua Achebe (1930- )

A selective list of online literary criticism for the Nigerian novelist and story writer Chinua Achebe, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in peer and editor reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA guidelines for web sites

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literary criticism

Eze, Emmanuel Chukuwudi. "Language and time in postcolonial experience." [and Nigerian literature] Research in African Literatures, 2008

Ezenwa-Ohaeto. A review of Chinua Achebe: A Biography in London Review of Books, Nov. 12, 1998, reviewed by Lewis Nkosi

Fuchs, Jacob. "Postcolonial mock-epic: Abrogation and appropriation." Studies in the Literary Imagination, Fall 2000

Greenberg, Jonathan. Okonkwo and the Storyteller: Death, Accident, and Meaning in Chinua Achebe and Walter Benjamin [Things Fall Apart]. Contemporary Literature 48 (Fall 2007)

Hoegberg, David. "Principle and practice: The logic of cultural violence in Achebe's Things Fall Apart." College Literature, Winter 1999

Mathuray, Mark. Realizing the sacred: power and meaning in Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God. Research in African Literatures, 2003

Munro, Ian H. Textual dynamics in Chinua Achebe's Home and Exile and No Longer at Ease. International Fiction Review, 2004

Okpewho, Isidore, ed. A review of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Casebook (Oxford UP 2003), with chapters on the character and motivation of Okonkwo. Reviewed in African Studies Quarterly, 03/22/04 by Chielozona Eze. Also, publisher's web site.

Okechukwu, Chinwe Christiana. Achebe the Orator: The Art of Persuasion in Chinua Achebe's Novels (Greenwood Press, 2001). Publisher's web site

Olaniyan, Tejumola. Chinua Achebe and an Archaeology of the Postcolonial African State [Arrow of God] Research in African Literatures, 2001

Powell, Andrea. Problematizing polygyny in the historical novels of Chinua Achebe: the role of the Western Feminist Scholar. [Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God] Research in African Literatures, 2008

Snyder, Carey "The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Ethnographic Readings: Narrative Complexity in Things Fall Apart," College Literature, Spring 2008.

Sullivan, Annie. The Question of a National Literature for Nigeria. Research in African Literatures, 2001

Wise, Christopher. "The garden trampled: Or, the liquidation of African culture in V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River." College Literature, Oct 1996. On Joseph Conrad's impact on Chinua Achebe and V.S. Naipaul.

Williams, Adebayo. The Autumn of the Literary Patriarch: Chinua Achebe and the Politics of Remembering. Research in African Literatures, 2001

introduction & lighter reading

"After Empire: Chinua Achebe and the great African novel," by Ruth Franklin, The New Yorker 26 May 2008

"Why Chinua Achebe, the Eagle on the Iroko, is Africa's writer of the century." USA Africa Online

Cornell U web site on Things Fall Apart includes a podcast interview with Professor Isaac Kramnick and Michele Moody-Williams and links to a panel webcast at Cornell, 8/21/05, on the novel

A teaching guide for Chinua Achebe, grades 9-12, from Edsitement, National Endowment for the Humanities

News story, "Literary giant Chinua Achebe returns 'home' from U.S., to love and adulation of community." USAfrica Online

Ekwe Ekwe, Herbert. A substantial introductory article on Chinua Achebe from the Literary Encyclopedia [subscription service]

YouTube video of Chinua Achebe speaking at Harvard, 09/22/07, and links to several other Achibe video clips

Achebe, Chinua. Some comments by Chinua Achebe, "On the Role of the African Writer," provided by Professor Robert Fletcher

Achebe, Chinua. "Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart Turns 50 This Year." Interview. "On the eve of his PEN American Center celebration, the Nigerian author sits down with the Village Voice," by Carol Cooper, 19 Feb. 2008

Achebe, Chinua. An interview with Chinua Achebe. Conjunctions, Fall 1991, by Bradford Morrow

Achebe, Chinua. An interview with Chinua Achebe in the Atlantic Monthly, August 2, 2000, by Katie Bacon

manuscripts

List of Achebe papers and manuscripts at Harvard's Houghton Library

An extensive bibliography of open-access online material on African Literature and Writers, from the library at Stanford U.

(CHIN-oo-ah ah-chay-BAY)

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