![]() ![]() To call my experience colonial heritage may surprise some people. He did not shirk writing of what "I have chosen to call my Middle Passage, my colonial inheritance. I read it with the sense of extraordinary entry into a brilliant (I do not use that word fashionably or lightly) mind, a writer's continuing achievement of penetrating the variety, possibilities, mystery of being human in the presence not only of one's own people and country, but of the world. His work Chike and the River was republished in 2011. His novel A Man of the People, a biting satire on corruption in freed African regimes, uses the blade of humour to alert us to official greed and the cant which legitimises it. His collection of essays, recently reissued as a modern classic, is The Education of a British-protected Child.Īchebe's works do not fear to challenge those post-colonial, independent regimes in Africa who abuse personal power in every possible way – from banning political opposition, to corruption. And trust Achebe to give a new definition of colonialism. Yet during those years he wrote novels, stories, essays and poems that were a bold revelation to his countrymen and women and the world of what suppression and oppression really meant. ![]() Achebe lived through these times – a tragic civil war in his country – as an activist in extreme personal danger, finally exile, fulfilling Albert Camus' statement of what it means to be a writer: "The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer." He kept faith with this commitment. ![]()
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