Things Fall Apart

"Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, was first published in 1958 by William Heinemann Ltd., and reprinted in 1962 by the same publishing house as the pioneering publication in its African Writers Series. It was an instant bestseller, and as such, became came the single best-known African novel across the globe gradually getting translated into at least forty-five different languages. The novel made its way into school syllabi all over the world almost immediately after its appearance on the stands, and also features in university courses on contemporary literature, postcolonial literature and African literature. This critical companion to Things Fall Apart engages with several aspects of the work the problem of generic classification, its status as an African text, its representation of the colonial encounter as it happened in nineteenth century Jeholand, its exploration of cultural differences between the colonised and the colomsers, their contrary notions of knowledge and of power and finally the narrative strategies deployed by Achebe to delineate the themes. Apart from including critical essays on each of these aspect the text, the critical companion also reprints some relevant article Achebe himself which are of help in interpreting his classic world Tapan Basu is Reader in the Department of English, Hindu College, University of Delhi. He has worked extensively on American Literature, African-American Literature and African Literature."