Chinua Achebe’s revolutionary book Things Fall Apart

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1958 Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, published his first book, Things Fall Apart.

Set in pre-colonial rural Nigeria, it examines how the arrival of foreigners led to tensions within traditional Igbo society.

The book revolutionised African writing, and began a whole new genre of world literature.

In 2016, Rebecca Kesby spoke to Achebe's youngest daughter, Nwando Achebe.

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(Photo: Chinua Achebe in 2013. Credit: Leonardo Cendamo via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, it's Lucy Wersley here and we're back with a brand new series of ladies swindlers.
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0:31.4	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:44.4	Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:50.9	Today we're going back to 1958 and the publication of a book that would change the world of literature.
0:56.8	Chenua Achebe's groundbreaking book, Things Fall Apart. In 2016, Rebecca Kesbby spoke to Chinua's youngest daughter and Wando Achebe. It was the first type of book
1:05.6	that really told the story of African peoples from an African point of view.
1:14.8	Professor Nwando Achebe is the youngest of Chenua Achebe's children.
1:19.8	She teaches African history at Michigan State University.
1:23.3	This is not to say that my father was the first writer to ever pen an African novel.
1:30.7	But things full apart certainly was the first book that began what we now know as the genre of African literature.
1:40.3	Chenua Achebe grew up in the Igbo culture under British colonial rule in Nigeria.
1:45.7	He showed enormous academic potential from a young age and won scholarships to the top schools.
1:51.1	But it wasn't long before he began questioning what he was being taught about his own continent,
1:56.7	all from a purely European perspective.
1:59.8	What they did was introduce them to the greats like Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
2:05.0	And my father talks about reading those books, but siding with the white man against the African savage without realizing that that African savage was in fact himself.
2:21.7	They realized that literature was not innocent, that literature had the ability to turn you against
	...

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