The Iroko has Fallen: Renowned Author Prof. Chinua Albert Achebe, dies at 82

RENOWNED Nigerian author Chinua Achebe known as the father of African literature, has died at the age of 82. His death followed an illness from a hospital in Boston.

Achebe, 82, was most famous for his ground breaking 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, which dealt with the impact of colonialism on African society. Things Fall Apart has sold more than 10 million copies - and has been translated into more than 50 languages. He has been living in the US since 1990 following injuries from a car crash.

A novelist, poet and essayist, Achebe was perhaps best known for his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, the story of the Igbo warrior Okonkwo and the colonial era, which has sold more than 10 million copies around the world and has been published in 50 languages.

Things Fall Apart is considered the most widely read book in modern African Literature. The book sold over 12 million copies and has been translated to over 50 languages worldwide. Many of his other novels, including Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, Anthills of the Savannah, and A man of the People, were equally influential as well.

Prof Achebe was born in Ogidi, Anambra State, on November 16, 1930 and attended St Philips’ Central School at the age of six. He moved away from his family to Nekede, four kilometres from Owerri, the capital of Imo State, at the age of 12 and registered at the Central School there.

He attended Government College Umuahia for his secondary school education. He was a pioneer student of the University College, now University of Ibadan in 1948. He was first admitted to study medicine but changed to English, history and theology after his first year.

Achebe won the Commonwealth poetry prize for his collection Christmas in Biafra, was a finalist for the 1987 Booker prize for his novel Anthills of the Savannah, and in 2007 won the Man Booker international prize. Chair of the judges on that occasion, Elaine Showalter, said he had "inaugurated the modern African novel", while her fellow judge, the South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, said his fiction was "an original synthesis of the psychological novel, the Joycean stream of consciousness, the postmodern breaking of sequence", and that Achebe was "a joy and an illumination to read".

May His Intellectual Soul Rest In Peace.