No Longer at Ease

Chinua Achebe was born in 1930, in Ogidi, Nigeria, during British colonial rule. Achebe grew up influenced by the Igbo tradition and Christianity, as his parents converted to the Protestant Church Mission society. He excelled as a school student and was admitted in the University of Ibadan, affiliated with the University of London, to study medicine on a scholarship. Achebe abandoned medicine to pursue English and literature. Achebe criticized Western literature for its stereotypical portrayals of African people. He contributed as an author and editor to the university’s magazine, University Herald. He graduated in 1953 and worked as a teacher before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation as a producer for 12 years. During the civil war for the Biafran independence in Nigeria, which started in 1967, Achebe toured in Europe and North America as an ambassador of Biafran affairs. Achebe fled the oppressive Nigerian regime in 1994 and moved to the United States. He became a professor at Bard College, New York before joining Brown University in 2009. He died in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2013.

Achebe’s works focus on the socio-political reality in Nigeria, the impact of colonialism, and the conflict between Western values and traditional African society. He is widely known for his three novels Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), and Arrow of God (1964), part of The African Trilogy.