Albert Chinualumogu Achebe‘s ‘Things Fall Apart’ has made it to the top five of the British Broadcasting Company’s 100 stories that shaped the world.
BBC Culture asked writers around the globe to pick stories that have endured across generations and continents and changed the society.
Apart from the Nigerian writer’s work, other great African literary works on the list include Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’ and ‘Children of Gebelawi’, written by Egyptian novelist, Naguib Mahfouz.
Although Achebe, one of Africa’s literary giants passed away in 2013 at the age of 82, his works have continued to make headlines, inspiring and influencing generations.
Things Fall Apart, Achebe’s first novel which was published in 1958 is widely considered his magnum opus and is the most widely read book in modern African literature.
In April, just months after the 60th anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart, the novel was named one of 12 novels considered ‘the Greatest Books Ever Written’ in a list compiled by Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
Things Fall Apart, which chronicles the pre-colonial life in Nigeria and the arrival of the Europeans during the late nineteenth century is also regarded as an important novel and one of the greatest classics of our time.
Not only did the novel interrogate the clash of cultures, traditional values and belief systems, it also illustrates and interrogates the dynamic themes of race, colonialism, and gender during the post-colonial conditions of present-day Nigeria.
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