Chinua Achebe (16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor and critic, best known for his novel Things Fall Apart (US – UK), considered to be the most widely read book in modern African Literature and winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2007.
Achebe lived a fascinating life, growing up in South-Eastern Nigeria. He excelled at school and won a scholarship to study medicine but changed his studies to English Literature at University College, Ibadan. It was here he began writing stories, eventually gaining worldwide attention for his works.
After the fight for Biafran Independence destroyed his homeland and ravaged the populace, bringing starvation and violence, Achebe became involved in local politics, and would eventually move to the US where he would become a professor until his death in 2013.
Today we’re reflecting on the author’s life with some of our favourite quotes. We hope you like them:
“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised. ”
“When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.”
“Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.”
“Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.”
“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
“Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.”
I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.”
“The impatient idealist says: ‘Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.”
“It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have – otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.”
“There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.”
Birmingham Poet, Benjamin Zephaniah dies, aged 65
Top Authors Join Legal Battle Against OpenAI for Mass Copyright Infringement
Literary Icon, Cormac McCarthy has died
The Literary World Mourns Martin Amis
