I am in Nigerian, and I am from the same state with Chinua Achebe. So my culture is on display here 🤩. This book was written in 1959, and a lot has changed since then. I read this book first at the age of 12 and later in my 20s but reading it now I'm seeing things differently in fact I am rediscovering so many things.
Wonderful. Do drop links that you think might be useful to us along the way, as well as anything else that grabs you – I know other readers will greatly appreciate it!
I'm working on Week 2 at the moment, and was thinking about the food Achebe mentions. Would the bean-cakes be similar to akara? I understand that akara comes from the Yoruba, and I wondered whether Igbo bean cakes were different. I also wondered whether foofoo varies across Nigeria.
Sure, I'll do that! Yes, bean cake is akara made from beans, we peel the skin of the beans, grind with pepper & crayfish into a thick paste and fry in hot oil. I just asked my mom where it originated from, she couldn't say but that all the tribes in Nigeria eat it. The Yorubas and Ibos call it akara while the Hausas call it Kose. As for fufu, it is made with different things. Yam fufu comes from boiling yam and pounding it in a motar until it's soft & fluffy, eating with various kinds of soups. (These days we have electric yam pounder but the baby boomers still prefers the one made with motar 😂). Fufu can also come from cassava, potato and so much more. The Yorubas eat more of pounded yam while the Ibos eat pounded yam and cassava fufu.
Peeling the skin of the beans sounds like a lot of work. I have heard that peeling the skins from garbanzos is supposed to make a nicer hummus, but I don’t have the patience!
It looks like a lot of work all right but my people are used to it. We also have another delicacy made like that but instead of frying it is turned into a thick paste and scooped into a foil or leave and steamed. We call it moi moi. There's an easy way to peel the skin, put in a blender and toss around for 2 to 3 minutes, the skin comes off easily and you use water to separate it.
I recently wrote about a stew I cooked with beans I bought in Kenya and I too peeled them as the skin was too rubbery/leathery. It took a special kind if persistence I didn’t know I possessed.
Absolutely fascinating insights. I would like to ask, are these customs and spiritual practices still happening today or has other external contributing factors has reshaped their cultural practices?
That’s a really great question! I’d say a lot of the customs and spiritual practices we see in Things Fall Apart are still around today, but they’ve definitely changed over time. Colonization, the spread of Christianity and Islam, and even globalization have all influenced how people express their culture now.
For example, some traditional Igbo practices like consulting a priest, celebrating the New Yam Festival, or showing deep respect for ancestors still happen, especially in rural areas. But they often exist alongside religions. So you might find someone who goes to church on Sunday but still takes part in traditional festivals or observes certain family rituals.
In a way, it’s not that the old customs disappeared completely they’ve just adapted. People have found ways to blend the old and the new, keeping that cultural identity alive while also embracing modern influences.
I think the key word for me is - “ adapt’ to the modern influences to keep evolving to hold and keep one’s cultural identity. This enrich us to renew our purpose and meaning in our lives today.
I am wanting to know about the lives of the women and young girls- such as their marriages and female practices, if you can get my gist? If there are any academic articles and books you can point to me, I would be very grateful.
I have so many questions as I read through these chapters for this week. So I will be back to ask again!
I'm happy to answer as many questions as you have, the ones I don't know, I'll ask and find out for you.
I'm currently in my final year and trimester at university, so my schedule is quite busy. This means I might not be able to respond to your questions immediately. However, please don’t hesitate to ask anytime! Just write down your questions, and I'll make sure to get to them as soon as I can.
I am trying to keep my response short but it seems like I am losing the battle.
These are some of the articles I saved but haven't read them but I hope they help
Articles & Papers
Aspects of Traditional Attitude Towards Women in Igboland: An Evaluation by Ihuoma Elizabeth Obienusi — Explores how traditional Igbo society viewed women, rights, roles, and changes.
Patriarchy and Culture: The Position of Women in the Rural Igbo Community by Obienusi & Chikwendu — A detailed discussion on how patriarchal culture shapes women’s life in rural Igbo contexts.
Igbo values and women by Onyinye Patricia Emua & Edwin Etieyibo — Examines key Igbo cultural values and how they relate to women’s status and gender relations.
A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Traditional Marriage Terms in Awgbu‑Igbo by Makinde, Ezeonye & Eme — Looks at marriage terminology, language, and culture in one Igbo community, giving insights into how marriage is framed.
In traditional Igbo life, marriage is a deeply social event that binds two extended families rather than just two individuals. It involves negotiations, exchange of gifts, and community recognition. Girls are often raised with marriage as an expected stage of adulthood their upbringing teaches domestic, agricultural, and social skills that prepare them for family life. My grandma had a training center in late 1940s where girls were taught how to keep a home.
Marriage brings social standing to both families. Bride price is not seen as a purchase but as a symbolic token of respect and unity between kindreds. Polygamy is accepted, especially among men of status, and a man’s wealth and strength are often measured by the number of wives and children he supports, not these days anyway because by the time they calculate the tuition of 5 children, the brain resets automatically 😂😂😂
In Things Fall Apart, these customs are visible in how Okonkwo and other men discuss marriage, bride price, and their daughters’ futures. We also see the expectation that women move to their husband’s village after marriage, becoming part of his lineage.
In family and community life, women are custodians of morality, birth rituals, and food traditions. Through practices such as storytelling and market associations, they preserve cultural memory and social bonds.
Despite their importance, women’s autonomy is limited. They cannot take titles or own land in many communities, and violence against women is often accepted as discipline. Sons are valued more because lineage and inheritance pass through men. Yet women find subtle ways to assert agency through mutual support networks, motherhood, and spiritual influence.
I'm absolutely thrilled to be rereading Things Fall Apart, especially since I get to share the experience with people from all over the world. Thank you Simon for bringing us all together.
Hey Chioma! Fabulous that you can join us. Am I right in thinking you have Nigerian heritage? I'd be thrilled to have your insights into the book and perspective. I'm also excited by the enthusiasm for this slow read and so glad I picked it!
Hi Simon, Diana here from W&P. To echo the others, thank you so much for this amazing first post and the glossary reference! I'm really enjoying the reading thus far and Chinua Achebe’s gorgeous writing. In just these 5 short chapters he has brought the full village of Umuofia to life in such a rich and expansive way.
Being who I am, I am most drawn to Ikemefuna, who to me poses an interesting contrast to Okonkwo's chosen embodiment as an overbearing and cruel patriarch. On the one hand, Okonkwo admires Ikemefuna's hard working nature (he wishes his oldest son was more like him) but on the other, Ikemefuna also possesses the softer, artistic sensibilities of Unoka, Okonkwo's father. This is what I love about Ikemefuna: he has, at just 15 years of age, a harmonized balance of the “manly” traits Okonkwo so admires, but he is also capable of nurturing and caring for his adoptive mothers and siblings.
In this way, it's almost as if Okonkwo cannot escape the memory of the father he detests for being “too soft” and “agbala”. Okonkwo is fearful that his oldest son, Nwoye, will turn into Unoka. Meanwhile, Nwoye, who develops a deep bond of friendship with Ikemefuna, most admires Ikemefuna's storytelling and artistry, no doubt because these help to balance out Okonkwo's harsh and unforgiving stoicism. Ikemefuna offers his adoptive family what Okonkwo cannot give them, and for that he is cherished. Ikemefuna is the outsider in the family who points to a different way of being in the world…
Looking forward to where the stories will take us!
Hey Diana. Yes, it's interesting that we are drawn to Okonkwo's surrounding family (we haven't seen much of her yet, but I also really like Ezinma, Okonkwo's daughter). It makes me think back to the Yeats poem: "things fall apart, the centre cannot hold." Okonkwo is the centre, the embodiment of his culture as he sees it, and is dissatisfied with all the people who surround him.
That makes me think about the idea that Unoka stands for music and Ikemefuna for stories (we learn in the next part that Nwoye also likes stories) – but for Okonkwo these are like secondary characteristics of a culture, less important than masculine pride. And that feels like a bit of a critique of those who neglect art, music and literature as fundamental and central to the health of a society?
Reaction after this first section: I know nothing about Africa, let alone Nigeria. My U.S. public education ignored Africa. I am old enough to remember Biafra, but no details. I need Simon and fellow readers for sure! (Signed, Greenhorn with brand new boots not broken in)
Hello Katty, my dad fought in the Biafran war, my parents are also met during the war and got married and I lost my grandfather during the war. It was a terrible time in our history.
Kathy, I remember collections for Biafra at my Catholic parish when I was young. Now, many Nigerian Catholic priests study at a Catholic university in Pittsburgh for graduate degrees in philosophy, health counseling, humanities. They might have been beneficiaries of Catholic charity in their early years?...
I was just a kid in the early 1970s, but I seem to remember John Lennon returned his MBE to the Queen in protest of British policy in Biafra? (Something to do with Biafra, anyway.) He asked his Aunt Mimi (who brought him up) to send him the medal (as he'd left it with her) and when she found out what he'd done, she was furious with him!
Sorry to stop at chapter six, I was getting invested! This understated kind of writing is difficult to pull off, but Achebe is managing to create life vignettes that make characters feel alive. And he was 25 when he wrote this?! Astonishing. I appreciate how there's no sweeping moral judgement on Okonkwo but we get psychological observations to put him into prospective, e.g. how his violence stems from a sense of fear and shame, or how he "thinks" his son is lazy even when it's not true.
Thank you for all your notes Simon, I was googling facts as I read but it would have never been this comprehensive!
In the world we live today and the negativities swirling around us, I do not know why, but I feel so connected to reread this book again. I read this when I was studying for my International Baccalaureate instead of A levels. The best thing I did, as I was introduced to Things fall Apart and it made me realised there was something bigger than myself out there. I just wished I kept my study notes to compared the notes I will write now.
Simon, as always, - heartfelt thank you. Your research and thoughts to assist us in our comprehension of this book will make me, a more than ever, a better reader.
Thanks, Shanti. I suspect we are going to make all kinds of connections to where we are now, living in times that feel like they are falling apart. I never studied this book at school or Uni, so I am arriving quite fresh and keen!
Hello Simon, thank you for your guidance once again as we step into the Igbo community from the streets of Paris of Terror. I have never read anything from Achebe before and although starting out the story with Okonkwo (a character rather dislikable), I have high hopes for this journey. On one hand it reminds me an expansive story within a story labyrinth like Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude with its references to mythical river gods or spirits etc and the view of history being cyclical rather than linear. And on the other hand I’m curious to see Achebe’s take on the clash of the natives culture vs. the Colonial White Man. Looking forward to exploring all the rabbit holes and tangents :)
It's quite a jump from the Paris Terror to Igboland! It's good to bring in Gabriel García Márquez, and the idea of writing novels that incorporate other storytelling traditions beyond Europe. The narrator of Things Fall Apart seems clearly to be an "insider", presuming our familiarity with the language and patterns of Igbo life. I get the sense we have sat down at a fireside in the storyteller's obi to hear, perhaps, a cautionary tale about an ancestor called Okonkwo.
Good to be here with tangents to explore. This is a book I’ve barely heard of before so great to read something different (& slim which is a nice change from Hilary Mantel & War & Peace). I’m fascinated by the culture especially around food and all the details of the planting and harvesting (as a gardener!). Thanks for everything- your slow reads are the best!
Thank you, Simon, for bringing us together again around another slow read. I didn’t know the book, but already I’m totally in, despite the brutality of his protagonist and of some of the Igbo traditions at that particular moment in time… It feels as if some of the guillotined heads from the Parisian Reign of Terror had come to haunt us and to be used by Okonkwo to drink from them! 🤯
And I felt so heartbroken thinking of the sudden separation of Ikemefuna and the young virgin girl from their families! 😭
Simon, firstly, thank you so much for an in depth intro to a subject and an author new to many of us. I do not see how I would delve into every single footnote and tangent of something as expansive as a history of a big nation in a continent not very familiar to me, and all that, in a short span of five weeks, but this is a good start. And it is a trilogy! A wonderfully detailed book, vivid characters I was hoping for and lots of language and detail in the book itself and in our slow read. If anything, it is teaching us patience with a slow discovery of another culture, language and custom. (There are some books out there that could be extremely annoying being peppered with foreign words for added spice, we all know those - but here is exactly a masterclass on how it should be done to keep the flow of the story. There are many concepts that require to be put across on their own terms.) I still appreciate the glossary 🤓
It is interesting that the above is done with a complicated character in focus. You could chose an awesome, kind, sensitive and powerful person, but Achebe chooses not to do that while he brings us into a warrior environment that equally values farming, domestic life, family and wisdom; skill in a fight, as much as appreciation of nature that feeds the community with its fruit, and music and artistic expression. I keep highlighting in my electronic book - the protagonist, no matter how restrained and seemingly emotionless, is observing and surrounded by all these aspects, they cannot fail to impact him on many levels. Much to reread after every chapter is finished!
Looking forward to trying this book again... I read it during college -- hastily and shallowly as one sometimes does at that age and on a deadline -- and didn't get much out of it. All I remembered was that there were a lot of yams. I enjoyed the first few chapters at a slower pace!
Sometimes it just takes a slower pace! The first time I picked this up I wondered why the British don't appear until towards the end of the book. It's not at all constructed how I expected.
Thanks for telling us Okonkwo isn't a nice character. Throughout the first five chapters, I kept thinking, "Ugh, what a brute!" And when he shot at one of his wives, I was ready to kick his a$$. Looking forward to all your meticulously researched and well-written posts.
Far more interesting than whether he is nice or not, is why he is like that … and why Chinua Achebe has chosen such a troubled figure as his protagonist… thanks Alexandria!
Excited to be part of this slow read. It’s been many years since I read Things Fall Apart and I know there’s so much I missed. Thank Simon for your depth of research in this post! Looking forward to coming back
Great to have you here! This is only my second read, and the first time was last year. But great to have the opportunity to really explore the rabbit holes.
Great to be slow reading again. I’m already feeling a bit of trepidation.. and first impressions.. I don’t like Okonkwo.. but will he grow on me? Thanks for the glossary👍
Hey Lynn, good to have you back! And here's Okonkwo with a healthy reminder that we don't need to like our main character to find the story interesting and rewarding. We've been here before!
Great to read all these comments as I am re-reading this for the 4th or 5th time, and Okonkwo has become no less violent…I am excited to be on this journey with other readers and as a food anthropologist who’s spent much of her career studying food practices in West Africa, I love seeing the food has already become a focus of the discussion here.
I am in Nigerian, and I am from the same state with Chinua Achebe. So my culture is on display here 🤩. This book was written in 1959, and a lot has changed since then. I read this book first at the age of 12 and later in my 20s but reading it now I'm seeing things differently in fact I am rediscovering so many things.
Wonderful. Do drop links that you think might be useful to us along the way, as well as anything else that grabs you – I know other readers will greatly appreciate it!
I'm working on Week 2 at the moment, and was thinking about the food Achebe mentions. Would the bean-cakes be similar to akara? I understand that akara comes from the Yoruba, and I wondered whether Igbo bean cakes were different. I also wondered whether foofoo varies across Nigeria.
Sure, I'll do that! Yes, bean cake is akara made from beans, we peel the skin of the beans, grind with pepper & crayfish into a thick paste and fry in hot oil. I just asked my mom where it originated from, she couldn't say but that all the tribes in Nigeria eat it. The Yorubas and Ibos call it akara while the Hausas call it Kose. As for fufu, it is made with different things. Yam fufu comes from boiling yam and pounding it in a motar until it's soft & fluffy, eating with various kinds of soups. (These days we have electric yam pounder but the baby boomers still prefers the one made with motar 😂). Fufu can also come from cassava, potato and so much more. The Yorubas eat more of pounded yam while the Ibos eat pounded yam and cassava fufu.
That's great! Thank you.
Peeling the skin of the beans sounds like a lot of work. I have heard that peeling the skins from garbanzos is supposed to make a nicer hummus, but I don’t have the patience!
It looks like a lot of work all right but my people are used to it. We also have another delicacy made like that but instead of frying it is turned into a thick paste and scooped into a foil or leave and steamed. We call it moi moi. There's an easy way to peel the skin, put in a blender and toss around for 2 to 3 minutes, the skin comes off easily and you use water to separate it.
I recently wrote about a stew I cooked with beans I bought in Kenya and I too peeled them as the skin was too rubbery/leathery. It took a special kind if persistence I didn’t know I possessed.
Hi Chioma,
Absolutely fascinating insights. I would like to ask, are these customs and spiritual practices still happening today or has other external contributing factors has reshaped their cultural practices?
Thank you, Chioma.
Hi Shanti,
That’s a really great question! I’d say a lot of the customs and spiritual practices we see in Things Fall Apart are still around today, but they’ve definitely changed over time. Colonization, the spread of Christianity and Islam, and even globalization have all influenced how people express their culture now.
For example, some traditional Igbo practices like consulting a priest, celebrating the New Yam Festival, or showing deep respect for ancestors still happen, especially in rural areas. But they often exist alongside religions. So you might find someone who goes to church on Sunday but still takes part in traditional festivals or observes certain family rituals.
In a way, it’s not that the old customs disappeared completely they’ve just adapted. People have found ways to blend the old and the new, keeping that cultural identity alive while also embracing modern influences.
Chioma,
Thank you for your reply. I truly appreciate it.
I think the key word for me is - “ adapt’ to the modern influences to keep evolving to hold and keep one’s cultural identity. This enrich us to renew our purpose and meaning in our lives today.
I am wanting to know about the lives of the women and young girls- such as their marriages and female practices, if you can get my gist? If there are any academic articles and books you can point to me, I would be very grateful.
I have so many questions as I read through these chapters for this week. So I will be back to ask again!
Thank you Chioma.💐
I'm happy to answer as many questions as you have, the ones I don't know, I'll ask and find out for you.
I'm currently in my final year and trimester at university, so my schedule is quite busy. This means I might not be able to respond to your questions immediately. However, please don’t hesitate to ask anytime! Just write down your questions, and I'll make sure to get to them as soon as I can.
I am trying to keep my response short but it seems like I am losing the battle.
These are some of the articles I saved but haven't read them but I hope they help
Articles & Papers
Aspects of Traditional Attitude Towards Women in Igboland: An Evaluation by Ihuoma Elizabeth Obienusi — Explores how traditional Igbo society viewed women, rights, roles, and changes.
https://nigerianjournalsonline.org/index.php/AJOH/article/view/3/2
Patriarchy and Culture: The Position of Women in the Rural Igbo Community by Obienusi & Chikwendu — A detailed discussion on how patriarchal culture shapes women’s life in rural Igbo contexts.
https://journals.unizik.edu.ng/odibendi/article/view/1371/1100
Igbo values and women by Onyinye Patricia Emua & Edwin Etieyibo — Examines key Igbo cultural values and how they relate to women’s status and gender relations.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02580136.2023.2283672
A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Traditional Marriage Terms in Awgbu‑Igbo by Makinde, Ezeonye & Eme — Looks at marriage terminology, language, and culture in one Igbo community, giving insights into how marriage is framed.
https://journal.hmjournals.com/index.php/JLLS/article/view/4560?utm
Thanks for sharing all these links, Chioma!
In traditional Igbo life, marriage is a deeply social event that binds two extended families rather than just two individuals. It involves negotiations, exchange of gifts, and community recognition. Girls are often raised with marriage as an expected stage of adulthood their upbringing teaches domestic, agricultural, and social skills that prepare them for family life. My grandma had a training center in late 1940s where girls were taught how to keep a home.
Marriage brings social standing to both families. Bride price is not seen as a purchase but as a symbolic token of respect and unity between kindreds. Polygamy is accepted, especially among men of status, and a man’s wealth and strength are often measured by the number of wives and children he supports, not these days anyway because by the time they calculate the tuition of 5 children, the brain resets automatically 😂😂😂
In Things Fall Apart, these customs are visible in how Okonkwo and other men discuss marriage, bride price, and their daughters’ futures. We also see the expectation that women move to their husband’s village after marriage, becoming part of his lineage.
In family and community life, women are custodians of morality, birth rituals, and food traditions. Through practices such as storytelling and market associations, they preserve cultural memory and social bonds.
Despite their importance, women’s autonomy is limited. They cannot take titles or own land in many communities, and violence against women is often accepted as discipline. Sons are valued more because lineage and inheritance pass through men. Yet women find subtle ways to assert agency through mutual support networks, motherhood, and spiritual influence.
I'm absolutely thrilled to be rereading Things Fall Apart, especially since I get to share the experience with people from all over the world. Thank you Simon for bringing us all together.
Hey Chioma! Fabulous that you can join us. Am I right in thinking you have Nigerian heritage? I'd be thrilled to have your insights into the book and perspective. I'm also excited by the enthusiasm for this slow read and so glad I picked it!
Hi Simon, Diana here from W&P. To echo the others, thank you so much for this amazing first post and the glossary reference! I'm really enjoying the reading thus far and Chinua Achebe’s gorgeous writing. In just these 5 short chapters he has brought the full village of Umuofia to life in such a rich and expansive way.
Being who I am, I am most drawn to Ikemefuna, who to me poses an interesting contrast to Okonkwo's chosen embodiment as an overbearing and cruel patriarch. On the one hand, Okonkwo admires Ikemefuna's hard working nature (he wishes his oldest son was more like him) but on the other, Ikemefuna also possesses the softer, artistic sensibilities of Unoka, Okonkwo's father. This is what I love about Ikemefuna: he has, at just 15 years of age, a harmonized balance of the “manly” traits Okonkwo so admires, but he is also capable of nurturing and caring for his adoptive mothers and siblings.
In this way, it's almost as if Okonkwo cannot escape the memory of the father he detests for being “too soft” and “agbala”. Okonkwo is fearful that his oldest son, Nwoye, will turn into Unoka. Meanwhile, Nwoye, who develops a deep bond of friendship with Ikemefuna, most admires Ikemefuna's storytelling and artistry, no doubt because these help to balance out Okonkwo's harsh and unforgiving stoicism. Ikemefuna offers his adoptive family what Okonkwo cannot give them, and for that he is cherished. Ikemefuna is the outsider in the family who points to a different way of being in the world…
Looking forward to where the stories will take us!
Hey Diana. Yes, it's interesting that we are drawn to Okonkwo's surrounding family (we haven't seen much of her yet, but I also really like Ezinma, Okonkwo's daughter). It makes me think back to the Yeats poem: "things fall apart, the centre cannot hold." Okonkwo is the centre, the embodiment of his culture as he sees it, and is dissatisfied with all the people who surround him.
That makes me think about the idea that Unoka stands for music and Ikemefuna for stories (we learn in the next part that Nwoye also likes stories) – but for Okonkwo these are like secondary characteristics of a culture, less important than masculine pride. And that feels like a bit of a critique of those who neglect art, music and literature as fundamental and central to the health of a society?
Reaction after this first section: I know nothing about Africa, let alone Nigeria. My U.S. public education ignored Africa. I am old enough to remember Biafra, but no details. I need Simon and fellow readers for sure! (Signed, Greenhorn with brand new boots not broken in)
Hello Katty, my dad fought in the Biafran war, my parents are also met during the war and got married and I lost my grandfather during the war. It was a terrible time in our history.
A vaguely remembered word for me is your life. I will think about this for a long time. Thank you.
Kathy, I remember collections for Biafra at my Catholic parish when I was young. Now, many Nigerian Catholic priests study at a Catholic university in Pittsburgh for graduate degrees in philosophy, health counseling, humanities. They might have been beneficiaries of Catholic charity in their early years?...
I was just a kid in the early 1970s, but I seem to remember John Lennon returned his MBE to the Queen in protest of British policy in Biafra? (Something to do with Biafra, anyway.) He asked his Aunt Mimi (who brought him up) to send him the medal (as he'd left it with her) and when she found out what he'd done, she was furious with him!
Me too, Kathy, from Australia.
Sorry to stop at chapter six, I was getting invested! This understated kind of writing is difficult to pull off, but Achebe is managing to create life vignettes that make characters feel alive. And he was 25 when he wrote this?! Astonishing. I appreciate how there's no sweeping moral judgement on Okonkwo but we get psychological observations to put him into prospective, e.g. how his violence stems from a sense of fear and shame, or how he "thinks" his son is lazy even when it's not true.
Thank you for all your notes Simon, I was googling facts as I read but it would have never been this comprehensive!
Hey Ellie! I didn't know you were joining us. How absolutely delightful!
Ha, I've bought the book yesterday night on a whim 😉
👍
In the world we live today and the negativities swirling around us, I do not know why, but I feel so connected to reread this book again. I read this when I was studying for my International Baccalaureate instead of A levels. The best thing I did, as I was introduced to Things fall Apart and it made me realised there was something bigger than myself out there. I just wished I kept my study notes to compared the notes I will write now.
Simon, as always, - heartfelt thank you. Your research and thoughts to assist us in our comprehension of this book will make me, a more than ever, a better reader.
Thanks, Shanti. I suspect we are going to make all kinds of connections to where we are now, living in times that feel like they are falling apart. I never studied this book at school or Uni, so I am arriving quite fresh and keen!
Hello Simon, thank you for your guidance once again as we step into the Igbo community from the streets of Paris of Terror. I have never read anything from Achebe before and although starting out the story with Okonkwo (a character rather dislikable), I have high hopes for this journey. On one hand it reminds me an expansive story within a story labyrinth like Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude with its references to mythical river gods or spirits etc and the view of history being cyclical rather than linear. And on the other hand I’m curious to see Achebe’s take on the clash of the natives culture vs. the Colonial White Man. Looking forward to exploring all the rabbit holes and tangents :)
It's quite a jump from the Paris Terror to Igboland! It's good to bring in Gabriel García Márquez, and the idea of writing novels that incorporate other storytelling traditions beyond Europe. The narrator of Things Fall Apart seems clearly to be an "insider", presuming our familiarity with the language and patterns of Igbo life. I get the sense we have sat down at a fireside in the storyteller's obi to hear, perhaps, a cautionary tale about an ancestor called Okonkwo.
Good to be here with tangents to explore. This is a book I’ve barely heard of before so great to read something different (& slim which is a nice change from Hilary Mantel & War & Peace). I’m fascinated by the culture especially around food and all the details of the planting and harvesting (as a gardener!). Thanks for everything- your slow reads are the best!
Thanks Hilary!
Thank you, Simon, for bringing us together again around another slow read. I didn’t know the book, but already I’m totally in, despite the brutality of his protagonist and of some of the Igbo traditions at that particular moment in time… It feels as if some of the guillotined heads from the Parisian Reign of Terror had come to haunt us and to be used by Okonkwo to drink from them! 🤯
And I felt so heartbroken thinking of the sudden separation of Ikemefuna and the young virgin girl from their families! 😭
Thank you for your guidance, as always😊
Heads seem to haunt our slow reads! I blame Hilary.
Simon, firstly, thank you so much for an in depth intro to a subject and an author new to many of us. I do not see how I would delve into every single footnote and tangent of something as expansive as a history of a big nation in a continent not very familiar to me, and all that, in a short span of five weeks, but this is a good start. And it is a trilogy! A wonderfully detailed book, vivid characters I was hoping for and lots of language and detail in the book itself and in our slow read. If anything, it is teaching us patience with a slow discovery of another culture, language and custom. (There are some books out there that could be extremely annoying being peppered with foreign words for added spice, we all know those - but here is exactly a masterclass on how it should be done to keep the flow of the story. There are many concepts that require to be put across on their own terms.) I still appreciate the glossary 🤓
It is interesting that the above is done with a complicated character in focus. You could chose an awesome, kind, sensitive and powerful person, but Achebe chooses not to do that while he brings us into a warrior environment that equally values farming, domestic life, family and wisdom; skill in a fight, as much as appreciation of nature that feeds the community with its fruit, and music and artistic expression. I keep highlighting in my electronic book - the protagonist, no matter how restrained and seemingly emotionless, is observing and surrounded by all these aspects, they cannot fail to impact him on many levels. Much to reread after every chapter is finished!
Looking forward to trying this book again... I read it during college -- hastily and shallowly as one sometimes does at that age and on a deadline -- and didn't get much out of it. All I remembered was that there were a lot of yams. I enjoyed the first few chapters at a slower pace!
Sometimes it just takes a slower pace! The first time I picked this up I wondered why the British don't appear until towards the end of the book. It's not at all constructed how I expected.
Thanks for telling us Okonkwo isn't a nice character. Throughout the first five chapters, I kept thinking, "Ugh, what a brute!" And when he shot at one of his wives, I was ready to kick his a$$. Looking forward to all your meticulously researched and well-written posts.
Far more interesting than whether he is nice or not, is why he is like that … and why Chinua Achebe has chosen such a troubled figure as his protagonist… thanks Alexandria!
I love troubled protagonists!
😂😂😂
Excited to be part of this slow read. It’s been many years since I read Things Fall Apart and I know there’s so much I missed. Thank Simon for your depth of research in this post! Looking forward to coming back
after I do my reading.
Great to have you here! This is only my second read, and the first time was last year. But great to have the opportunity to really explore the rabbit holes.
Thank you Simon - your in-depth research once again increases understanding and appreciation of this book.
Great to be slow reading again. I’m already feeling a bit of trepidation.. and first impressions.. I don’t like Okonkwo.. but will he grow on me? Thanks for the glossary👍
Hey Lynn, good to have you back! And here's Okonkwo with a healthy reminder that we don't need to like our main character to find the story interesting and rewarding. We've been here before!
We have! 👍
Great to read all these comments as I am re-reading this for the 4th or 5th time, and Okonkwo has become no less violent…I am excited to be on this journey with other readers and as a food anthropologist who’s spent much of her career studying food practices in West Africa, I love seeing the food has already become a focus of the discussion here.