HOW COULD THINGS FALL APART FOR WHOM THEY WERE NOT TOGETHER?

Chinua Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), is the most important work by an African author. ‘Over five million copies’ of the book have been sold and it has been translated into thirty languages.1 Its influence on the development of the contemporary African literary and critical tradition has been substantial. In the view of H.L.B.Moody, Elizabeth Gunner, and Edward Finnegan, it can be taken ‘to mark the beginning of modern African literature’ (vii), while for C.L.Innes, its author ‘may be deemed the “father of the African novel in English”’ (19).