Things Fall Apart: Further Resources
Our slow read of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart begins 29 September 2025 and runs for five weeks. Join here.
Chinua Achebe: In His Own Words
Interviews
(2009) Chinua Achebe with K. Anthony Appiah | 92Y Readings
(2008) Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Turns 50 This Year – Carol Cooper
(2008) A Conversation with Chinua Achebe - jstor paywall
(2008) Achebe Discusses Africa 50 Years After 'Things Fall Apart'
(2008) An Evening with Chinua Achebe
(2007) A long way from home | Books | The Guardian
(2007) Front Row - Chinua Achebe Interview, 2007 - BBC Sounds
(2007) Things Fall Together - The New York Times
(2005) Speaking Truth to Power: An Interview with Chinua Achebe, by Roger Bowen
(2000) Chinua Achebe: Views of Home From Afar, interview by Gayle Feldman
(2000) "An African Voice", Interview with Chinua Achebe. Interviews: Atlantic Unbound 2 Aug. by Katie Bacon
(1998) The Epic Imagination: A Conversation with Chinua Achebe at Annandale-on-Hudson, October 31, 1998 - jstor paywall
(1997) CHINUA ACHEBE:The Importance of Stories
(1998) Nigerian Author Chinua Achebe in 1998
(1994) Paris Review - Chinua Achebe, The Art of Fiction No. 13
(1991) Chinua Achebe: An Interview by Bradford Morrow
(1990) CHINUA ACHEBE Interview | Homelands | Writers and Wordsmiths | BBC Archive
(1990) An Interview With Chinua Achebe, by Charles H. Rowell in Callaloo, Winter, 1990, Vol. 1, pub: John Hopkins University Press - jstor paywall
(1988) Bill Moyers with Chinua Achebe
(1988) In Conversation with Chinua Achebe - Brenda Lyons - PN Review 219
(1987) An Interview with Chinua Achebe, by J. O. J. Nwachurwu-Agbada - jstor paywall
(2016 / 1980) James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe’s Forgotten Conversation About Beauty, Morality, and the Political Power of Art – The Marginalian - contains a portion of interview between Achebe and James Baldwin, another portion also found here: In Dialogue To Define Aesthetics: JAMES BALDWIN AND CHINUA ACHEBE
(1964) Chinua Achebe Interviewed by Lewis Nkosi and Wole Soyinka (1964)
Conversations with Chinua Achebe (Literary Conversations) - published collection of interviews, published in 1997.
Essays & Articles about Literature
(2002) The Day I Finally Met Baldwin - jstor paywall
(1991) Achebe-Teaching Things Fall Apart | PDF | General Fiction
(1978) An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Achebe’s famous critique of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness - jstor paywall
(1973) Chinua Achebe: Africa and Her Writers - jstor paywall
(1965, originally) English and the African Writer - jstor paywall
(1965) The Novelist As Teacher | PDF
Chinua Achebe: In His Own Words - a collection of quotations on literature and storytelling
Other Essays & Articles
(2012) How Things Fell Apart - an excerpt from his memoir ‘There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra’
(1999) TOMORROW IS UNCERTAIN: Today is Soon Enough, speech translated from Standard Igbo
(1999) Africa Is People - jstor paywall
(1990) The Judge and I Didn't Go to Namibia - jstor paywall
(1975) Chi in Igbo cosmology
Selection of Other Works
‘No Longer at Ease’ and ‘Arrow of God’, the subsequent novels in Achebe’s “African trilogy”
‘There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra’
‘Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1965-1987’ (published 1988)
Words by Others
Videos
If One Finger Brought Oil - Things Fall Apart Part 1: Crash Course Literature 208 (Crash Course)
Things Fall Apart, Part 2: Crash Course Literature 209 (Crash Course)
Understanding Things Fall Apart from a Postcolonial Perspective| Chinua Achebe| African Novel
Postcolonial World Literature Spring 2018 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart I - from GSW English and Modern Languages
Postcolonial World Literature Spring 2018 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart II - from GSW English and Modern Languages
Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart - The Context
Chinua Achebe : Things Fall Apart - The Text
Podcasts
Things Fall Apart: Part 1 (Close reads)
Things Fall Apart: Parts 2 and 3 (Close reads)
Biographies
Chinua Achebe | Biography, Books, & Facts | Britannica|
Chinua Achebe | EBSCO Research Starters
Articles & Reviews
(2020) The Art of Conversation Proverbs in Achebe's Things Fall Apart
(2017) The Achievement of Chinua Achebe | Kwame Anthony Appiah | The New York Review of Books - paywall
(2016) Portrait of the Author as a Historian: Chinua Achebe | History Today - paywall
(2013) Chinua Achebe's anti-colonial novels are still relevant today | Nesrine Malik | The Guardian
(2013) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was almost lost by London typists: the amazing story of the handwritten manuscript.
(2012) Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · Things Left Unsaid: Achebe on Biafra
(2010) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe | Classics | The Guardian
(2009) Chinua Achebe | Things Fall Apart | Slightly Foxed literary review
(1998) Lewis Nkosi · At the Crossroads Hour: Chinua Achebe - review of Chinua Achebe: A Biography by Ezenwa-Ohaeto
Overviews & Obituaries
(2016) Achebe's Legacy by Jules Chametzky - jstor paywall
(2013) Chinua Achebe | The Economist
(2013) Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82
(2013) Opinion | Africa’s Voice, Nigeria’s Conscience - The New York Times
(2013) Part 1 The Arts, Gender and the Self by Paget Henry - jstor paywall
(2013) Remembering Chinua Achebe by Ifa Bayeza, Callaloo - jstor paywall
(2013) Chinua Achebe Examined Colonialism and Masculinity - The New York Times
(2010) Chinua Achebe: A life in writing
(2008) Chinua Achebe and the Great African Novel | The New Yorker
Books about Chinua Achebe & Things Fall Apart
‘The Chinua Achebe Encyclopedia’ edited by M. Keith Booker
‘Celebrating Chinua Achebe: Essays on His Life, Legacy and Works’ edited by Chukweumeka Bosah
‘Chinua Achebe: Novelist, Poet, Critic | SpringerLink’ by David Carroll
‘Reading Chinua Achebe: Language and Ideology in Fiction’ by Simon Gikandi
‘Approaches to Teaching Achebe's Things Fall Apart’ edited by Bernth Lindfors, including an essay by Achebe on ‘Teaching Things Fall Apart’.
‘Chinua Achebe’ by Catherine Lynnette Innes
‘The Writings of Chinua Achebe (Studies in African literature)’ by G.D. Killam
‘The Fiction of Chinua Achebe’ by Jago Morrison
‘Chinua Achebe’ by Jago Morrison
‘Understanding Things Fall Apart: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents’ by Kalu Ogbaa
‘The Life and Times of Chinua Achebe’ by Kalu Ogbaa
Academic Works: Available with Login or Purchase
Papers, Articles, Theses & Chapters
(2022) Throwing away the Bathwater and Saving the Baby: Chinua Achebe’s Okonkwo and Qu Yuan of the Dragon-Boat Festival by Damazio Mfune-Mwanjakwa
(2022) CHAPTER 3: Igbo Life, Past and Present: Three Views by Ulf Hannerz
(2020) Literary Lions: Chinua Achebe and Ongoing dialogues in Modern African Literature by Leonard A. Podis
(2019) Allegories of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Three African Novels by Lori Hartmann
(2019) Rethinking Aristotle’s Hamartia: The Igbo Nigerian Tragic Form in Chinua Achebe’s Fiction by Ignatius Chukwumah
(2018) Tradition and Modernity in Chinua Achebe’s African Trilogy by Jago Morrison
(2018) "Watering the Imagination": Childhood and the Spaces of African Queerness by Bernie Lombardi
(2015) A Study on the “Things” in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart by Burcu Erdağ
(2014) Fiction, Culture, and the Concept of a Person by Oritsegbubemi Oyowe
(2014) How We Read "Things Fall Apart" Then by Eileen Julien
(2014) Chasms and Silences: For Chinua Achebe by Rhonda Cobham-Sander
(2014) Chinua Achebe's Ecocritical Awareness by Elaine Savory
(2014) “A Real Heaven on Their Own Earth”: Religious Missions, African Writers, and the Anticolonial Imagination by Megan Cole Paustian
(2014) REVISITING AND RETELLING THE HISTORY: ACHEBE’S NOVELS AND THE STORY OF NIGERIA by P. Anand
(2013) Things Fall Apart: An Analysis of Pre and Post-Colonial Igbo Society by Lame Maatla Kenalemang
(2013) A Picture of Africa: Frenzy, Counternarrative, Mimesis by Nidesh Lawtoo
(2012) Mami Wata and the Occluded Feminine in Anglophone Nigerian-Igbo Literature by Madhu Krishnan
(2011) Re-Imagining Gender in Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" by Christopher Anyokwu
(2011) Making a Post-Eurocentric Humanity: Tragedy, Realism, and Things Fall Apart by Kwaku Larbi Korang
(2011) Charting the Constellation: Past and Present in Things Fall Apart by Sofia Samatar
(2011) Interstices of Ante-Alienation in Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, and Arrow of God by Kevin Frank
(2010) “He does not understand our customs”: Narrating orality and empire in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart by Jarica Linn Watts
(2009) Chinua Achebe and the Uptakes of African Slaveries by Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi
(2008) Great Books Make Their Own History: A Commemorative Review of Things Fall Apart at Fifty by Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́
(2007) The "Crisis of the Soul": Psychoanalysis and African Literature by Uzoma Esonwanne
(2007) Oedipus, Ogbanje, and the Sons of Independence by Neil Ten Kortenaar
(2007) The Role of Missions in “Things Fall Apart” and “Nervous Condition” by Alison Searle
(2007) Okonkwo and the Storyteller: Death, Accident, and Meaning in Chinua Achebe and Walter Benjamin by Jonathan Greenberg
(2003) Prophecy, Authenticity, Oppositional Models: Writers and Politics in Africa by Ifi Amadiume
(2002) Igbo Metaphysics in Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" by Jude Chudi Okpala
(2002) Introduction: The Chinua Achebe Special Section by R. Victoria Arana
(2002) The "Native" Missionary, the African Novel, and In-between by Òlakunle George
(2001) Chinua Achebe and the Invention of African Culture by Simon Gikandi
(2000) The Plight of a Hero in Achebe’s "Things Fall Apart" by Patrick C. Nnoromele
(2000) Theoretical Construction and Constructive Theorizing on the Execution of Ikemefuna in Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" by Emeka Nwabueze
(1999) The Diane Rehm Show, May 21, 1999: A Discussion of Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" - discussion between Diane Rehm, Roger Wilkins, Patti Griffith, Ethelbert Miller and Valerie Babb.
(1999) Chinua Achebe Writing Culture: Representations of Gender and Tradition in "Things Fall Apart" by Kwadwo Osei-Nyame
(1999) Principle and Practice: The Logic of Cultural Violence in Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" by David Hoegberg
(1999) Excavating the New Republic: Post-Colonial Subjectivity in Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" by Christopher Wise
(1998) Decolonizing the Mind with Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and Chinua Achebe: Searching for a Voice in Postcolonial African Literature by Steven M. Almquist
(1997) Achebe’s Sense of an Ending: History and Tragedy in “Things Fall Apart” by Richard Begam
(1997) African Literature and Its Context: Teaching Teachers of Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" by Tanure Ojaide
(1997) Native Identity and Alienation in Richard Wright's "Native Son" and Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart” by Joko Sengova
(1996) "I Have Spoken": Fictional "Orality" in Indigenous Fiction by Wolfgang Hochbruck
(1996) The Metamorphosis of Piety in Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" by Clayton G. MacKenzie
(1994) Realism, Criticism, and the Disguises of Both: A Reading of Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" with an Evaluation by Ato Quayson
(1993) Okonkwo and His Mother: Things Fall Apart and Issues of Gender in the Constitution of African Postcolonial Discourse by Biodun Jeyifo
(1993) Culture in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart by Diana Akers Rhoads
(1992) Chapter 'Narrative Proverbs in the African Novel' by Obiechina, in book 'Oral Tradition'
(1992) Ezinma: The Ogbanje Child in Achebe's Things Fall Apart - Aron Aji and Kirstin Lynne Ellsworth by Aron Aji and Kirstin Lynne Ellsworth
(1992) Okonkwo’s Participation in the Killing of his “Son” in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: A Study of Ignoble Decisiveness by Solomon O. Iyasere
(1992) Modern African Literature and Cultural Identity by Tanure Ojaide
(1991) The Politics of Interpretation: the Novels of Chinua Achebe by Kofi Owusu
(1991) The Dynamics of Spatiality in African Fiction by Benedict M. Ibitokun
(1989) Chinua Achebe: His Novels and the Environment by Clement A. Okafor
(1988) Joseph Conrad and Chinua Achebe: Two Antipodal Portraits of Africa by Clement Abiaziem Okafor
(1987) Eternal Sacred Order Versus Conventional Wisdom: A Consideration of Moral Culpability in the Killing of Ikemefuna in Things Fall Apart by Damian U. Opata
(1987) Things Come together with "Things Fall Apart" by Kathleen M. Puhr
(1986) Expatriate Characters in the Early African Novel by L. Losambe
(1986) Semiotic Constants and Perceptions of Change: A study of the Symbolism and Imagery of Change and Development in African Literature by Felix Mnthali
(1985) Heroic Failure in the Novels of Achebe by Ian Glenn
(1985) Rhythm and Narrative Method in Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" by B. Eugene McCarthy
(1985) Creating a Past: Achebe, Naipaul, Soyinka, Farah by Reed Way Dasenbrock
(1981) Slavery and the African Imagination: A Critical Perspective by S. E. Ogude
(1981) An Objective Approach to Achebe's Style by Marjorie Winters
(1979) Warfare in the Novels of Chinua Achebe by Emeka P. Abanime
(1978) The African Novelist as a Mediator between Art and Social Philosophy by Ali A. Mazrui
(1975) Structure and Significance in Achebe's Things Fall Apart by Emmanuel Obiechina
(1975) Chinua Achebe : His Ideas on African Literature by Ihechukwu Madubuike
(1974) The Story of a Man and his People: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart by Ernest A. Champion
(1974) Themes in African Literature Today by Per Wästberg
(1973) Art, A Simulacrum of Reality -- Problems in the Criticism of African Literature by Solomon O. Isayere
(1973) Folklore and the African Novelist: Achebe and Tutuola by William R. Ferris, Jr
(1972) Nigeria, Alienation and The Novels of Achebe by Omalara Leslie
(1971) Levels of Ambiguity in the African Novel by Max Dorsinville
(1971) Chinua Achebe's Novels by G. D. Killam
(1971) The African Novel in Transition: Chinua Achebe | South Atlantic Quarterly | Duke University Press by James Olney
(1965) Three West African Novelists by Martin Tucker
Historical Context
Primary Sources
The lower Niger and its tribes by Major Arthur Glyn Leonard, 1906 - a real-world analogue of Achebe’s imagined text ‘The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger’ written by the District Commissioner
Anthropological report on the Ibo-speaking peoples of Nigeria : Thomas, Northcote Whitridge, 1868, part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
Among the Ibos of Nigeria, an account of the curious & interesting habits, customs, & beliefs of a little known African people by one who has for many years lived amongst them on close & intimate terms : Basden, George Thomas, 1873-1944
Secondary Sources
‘The Forgotten Era’ by Max Siollun, published 2025
‘What Britain Did to Nigeria’ | Hurst Publishers by Max Siollun, published 2024
‘Missionary Enterprise and Rivalry in Igboland, 1857-1914’ by Felix K. Ekechi
Nigerian Colonial History Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Birth of the Nigerian Colony — Google Arts & Culture
Nigeria - Colonialism, Independence, Civil War | Britannica
History of Nigeria - Wikipedia
Colonial Nigeria - Wikipedia
Long Division: The tension between colonial government and the work of missionaries characterised British colonialism in Nigeria. | History Today
Igbo people - Wikipedia
Igbo | Culture, Lifestyle, & Facts | Britannica
’The Igbos and their Traditions’ by Bertrand Osuagwu, chapters 1-5, chapters 6-10, and chapters 11-15, translated by Frances W. Pritchett in 2003
’Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture’ by A. E. Afigbo, published 1981
Igboland - Wikipedia
Odinala / Omenana- Wikipedia - Igbo religion
Ikenga In Traditional Igbo Society By Rose Okere
Arusi - Wikipedia - Spirits worshipped in Igbo religion
Igbo architecture - Wikipedia
‘The traditional architecture of the Igbo of Nigeria’ by Godwin Nsude, 1987
Igbo art - Wikipedia
IGBO ART IN SOCIAL CONTEXT BY HERBERT M. COLE
Ụkpụrụ̄: tumblr blog showing 'Historical images of the Igbo, their neighbours and beyond.'