By Mursi Saad El-Din The Nigerian novelist Chenua Achebe has just been awarded the Man Booker international prize, given every two years for an exceptional lifetime's achievement. Nadine Gordimer, a South African Nobel Laureate and member of the board of judges for the prize, described him as the "father of modern African literature". I first got to know the works of Achebe when I was asked to write an introduction to and revise the Arabic translation by Anggele Butrus of his first novel, Things Fall Apart, in the first thousand book scheme. I had previously read works by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutola and was ready for Achebe's works. It seems that out of all African countries, it is Nigeria that has produced the greatest novelists. Nadine Gordimer admitted that, like other African writers, she is indebted to Achebe for the ground he broke. Of course, there are other African writers who could claim international fame, like Alex Laguma of South Africa, Ngugu from Kenya, Ousmane Sembene from Senegal, but when it comes to the novel, Achebe is the master. On the occasion of his winning the Man Booker prize, the London Guardian Weekly published an interview with him. The interviewer, Ed Pikington had to travel to "a bungalow on the banks of the Hudson, upriver from New York, surrounded by clapboard houses, rolling green hills and cows chewing the cud. Achebe is now living in the USA, teaching at Bard College in New York state , where he has been living for 15 years". Achebe is a political writer and his novels deal with his motherland. Things Fall Apart -- the is taken from a poem by W B Yeats: "Things Fall Apart and the Centre can not hold" -- was published in 1958. It was, in the words of Achebe to Pilkington, "a story that only someone who went through it could be trusted to give. It was insisting to be told by the owner of the story, not by others, no matter how well- meaning or competent". Achebe is distinguished by his own English which is according to the interviewer is "part standard English, part pidgin, part language of folklore and proverb. His writing crackles with vivid, universal and yet deeply African images." Commenting on this Achebe says, "The story is so different from what I had read as a child; I knew I could not write like Dickens or Conrad. My story would not accept that. So, you had to make an English that was new. Whether it is going to work or not, I could not tell." Pilkington comments, "If bald statistics are any measure, it did work -- handsomely. Things Fall Apart sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into 50 languages. More importantly, it spawned a whole generation of African writers who emulated its linguistic ingenuity and political vision." The life story of Achebe can shed light on his novels. Born in 1930 to Christian converts, he lived a childhood "full of the Bible and hymns, and he learned English from the age of eight. He then went to the University of London, located in Abadan." When Achebe was born he was called Albert, but, like many African intellectuals, he changed his name back to something typically African. I read Things Fall Apart many years ago and my recollection of it might have faded. But if I remember rightly, it was part of a trilogy, followed by No Longer at Ease, which was also translated into Arabic, and was published in 1960. When Achebe began writing his first novel, it was intended to tell the story of three generations: the traditional villager Okon Kwo, his son Nwoya (who converts to Christianity), and Okonkwo's grandson Obl (probably Chenu) who is sent to England to study. The original idea of one novel was later transformed into a trilogy. The first part was set in the 1890s and steeped in the ancient ways of Achebe's Igbo people, with their several gods, elaborate ceremonies and hierarchies, "and the tough but effective policing mechanisms [which] force Okonkwo, the subject of the book, into exile". When Achebe realised that one novel could not carry off the plot, he decided to change it into a trilogy. The trilogy, according to Pilkington, "would relate the colonial destruction of Africa in three acts: the land as it was before the white man, the arrival of missionaries and finally the internalisation by Africans of colonial ways". He goes on to say, "It would also tell Achebe's own story, with Okonkwo representing his grand parents, Nwoge his Christian convert parents and the English-educated Obi being Achebe himself..."
