Chinua Achebe For the CSET

Chinua Achebe is an author you should know about if you are preparing for the CSET English or the CSET Multiple Subjects exams. This is a continuation of our lessons on World Literature.

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe (November 16, 1930 – still living) is one of the most well-known contemporary writers from Africa, specifically, Nigeria.

Achebe was born in Ogidi, Nigeria and attended University College in Ibadan. During the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967 to 1970, he worked for the Biafran government as an ambassador, an experience that inspired him to write the poem Refugee Mother and Child.

Achebe is considered the father of the African novel in English as well as one of the world’s most acclaimed writers. His modern African classic Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, has sold over 10 million copies around the world and has been translated into fifty languages.

He is currently Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College in Upstate New York. He is married to Professor Christie Chinwe Achebe, with whom he has 4 children.

In 1990 he was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident.

Read the Wikipedia article on Chinua Achebe then return to this lesson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinua_Achebe