Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: 1958-2008(Cross/Cultures)

Since its publication in 1958, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart has won global critical and popular acclaim. Offering a hitherto unlimned picture of a traditional culture, it is both a moving story of the coming of colonialism and a powerful and complex political statement on the nature of cross-cultural encounter. The novel has been immensely influential work as the progenitor of a whole movement in fiction, drama, and poetry focusing on the re-evaluation of traditional cultures and postcolonial tensions. It enjoys a pre-eminent position as a foundational text of postcolonial studies.
This collection, originating in a conference held in London to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the novel’s first publication, opens with a fascinating, insightful, and wide-ranging interview with Achebe. The essays that following explore contemporary critical responses and the novel’s historical and cultural contexts. Achebe’s influence on the latest generation of Nigerian writers is discussed in essays devoted to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Another essay examines the radical feminist response to the novel in the work of the francophone Algerian writer Assia Djebar, another the illustrations accompanying early editions. Teaching strategies and reader responses to the novel cover Texas, Scotland, and Australia. One measure of the phenomenal worldwide success of Things Fall Apart is the fact that it has been rendered into some forty-five languages; accordingly, further contributions offer sharp analyses of the German and Polish translations of the novel.
Contributors: Mick Jardine, Dorota Gołuch, Waltraud Kolb, Bernth Lindfors, Russell McDougall, Malika Rebai Maamri, Michel Naumann, Chika Okeke–Agulu, Christopher E.W. Ouma, Rashna Batliwala Singh, Andrew Smith, David Whittaker.

Table of Contents:
Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Chinua Achebe in Conversation Chinua Achebe in Conversation with Jack Mapanje and Laura Fish (Newcastle University, U.K.) Approaches to Things Fall Apart Michael Jardine: Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe, and the Politics of Magic Rashna B. Singh: The Art of Conversation: How the 'Subaltern' Speaks in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness Michel Naumann: The Semantic Structure of Things Fall Apart and Its Historical Meaning Chika Okeke - Agulu: The Politics of Form: Uche Okeke's Illustrations for Achebe's Things Fall Apart Things Fall Apart and its Literary Heritage Christopher E. W. Ouma: Daughters of Sentiment, Genealogies, and Conversations Between Things Fall Apart and Purple Hibiscus David Whittaker: The Novelist as Teacher: Things Fall Apart and the Hauntology of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun Malika Rebai Maamri: Re-Inventing Africa: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Assia Djebar's L'Amour, la Fantasia Things Fall Apart in Other Contexts Bernth Lindfors: Teaching Things Fall Apart in Texas Andrew Smith: First and Second Glances: Working-Class Scottish Readers and Things Fall Apart Russell McDougall: Things Fall Apart: Culture, Anthropology, and Literature Things Fall Apart in Translation Waltraud Kolb: Re-Writing Things Fall Apart in German Dorota GoAuch: Chinua Achebe Translating, Translating Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart in Polish and the Task of Postcolonial Translation Notes on Contributors

About the Author :
David Whittaker has been a lecturer at Birkbeck College and at the University of Greenwich in London. He is the author of a number of essays on Nigerian and African literature, and, together with Mpalive–Hangson Msiska, of Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” (2007). His research interests also embrace contemporary diasporic postcolonial literature generally. He is currently residing in Australia.