Nigerian Novel: A Reading of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as World Literature

Abstract

The paper examined Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart as an example of world literature and emphasizes how Nigerian (Igbo) perception of the world is illuminated in the text investigated.  Although previous studies have been done on Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the paper pays critical attention to gender, race, tradition, religion, ethnicity, nationality, culture clash, Igbo cosmology, and politics in colonial Eastern Nigeria. The tension between the British colonial actors and Okonkwo are equally examined. The essay adopts postcolonial theory as its theoretical framework. The paper concludes that issues examined in the text are not only regional but global. The paper recommends that further studies should be done on the works of Nigerian novelists that illuminate tenets of World Literature.

Keywords: Chinua Achebe, postcolonialism, culture, world literature, Umuofia, conflict

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/92-01

Publication date:October 31^st 2022