Author of ‘Things Fall Apart’ Prof Chinua Achebe is dead

• Posted on March 22, 2013March 22, 2013
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comments Off on Author of ‘Things Fall Apart’ Prof Chinua Achebe is dead

Nigeria’s literary icon and publisher of several novels, Chinua Achebe, is dead. Mr. Achebe, 82, died in the United States where he was said to have suffered from an undisclosed ailment. Premium Times learnt he died last night in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. A source close to the family said the professor had been ill for a while and was hospitalised in an undisclosed hospital in Boston. The source declined to provide further details, saying the family would issue a statement on the development later today. Contacted, spokesperson for Brown University, where Mr. Achebe worked until he took ill, Darlene Trewcrist, is yet to respond to our enquiries on the professor’s condition. Until his death, the renowned author of Things Fall Apart was the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown. The University described him as “known the world over for having played a seminal role in the founding and development of African literature.” “Achebe’s global significance lies not only in his talent and recognition as a writer, but also as a critical thinker and essayist who has written extensively on questions of the role of culture in Africa and the social and political significance of aesthetics and analysis of the postcolonial state in Africa,” Brown University writes of the literary icon. Mr. Achebe was the author of Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, and considered the most widely read book in modern African Literature. The book sold over 12 million copies and has been translated to over 50 languages worldwide. Many of his other novels, including Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, Anthills of the Savannah, and A man of the People, were equally influential as well. Prof Achebe was born in Ogidi, Anambra State, on November 16, 1930 and attended St Philips’ Central School at the age of six. He moved away from his family to Nekede, four kilometres from Owerri, the capital of Imo State, at the age of 12 and registered at the Central School there. He attended Government College Umuahia for his secondary school education.