Birth:
Chinua Achebe was born November 16, 1930 in Ogidi, Nigeria.Chinua Achebe Background and Writing:
Chinua Achebe was the fifth child of six born to a Christian couple of the Igbo tribe in Nigeria. He was educated at a government college in Umuahia and University College in Ibadan, Nigeria. He received a B.A. in 1958 and then worked in broadcasting, becoming the a director of the Voice of Nigeria.Achebe began writing short stories as a university student. After college, he became dissatisfied with the portrayal of Africans in British literature and wrote his first novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1959. The book was immediately internationally acclaimed. According to Bruce King in Introduction to Nigerian Literature,
"Achebe was the first Nigerian writer to successfully transmute the conventions of the novel, a European art form, into African literature."
During the 1960's Achebe wrote No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966).
"Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world."
In 1967, during the Nigerian civil war, Achebe involved himself in politics, becoming an ambassador for Biafra. He traveled to various countries and wrote articles making the case for Biafran independence. He stopped writing novels during this time but produced three volumes of poetry.
After the fall of Biafra, Achebe resumed teaching at the University of Nigeria. For a brief time in the 1970's he taught in the United States at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut before returning to Nigeria. In 1987, he published Anthills of the Savannah, a finalist for the Booker Prize.
In 1990, he was involved in an accident that left him partially paralyzed, and it was recommended he return to the U.S. for superior medical attention.
In June 2007, Achebe received the Man Booker International Prize recognizing, "one writer's overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. In seeking out literary excellence the judges consider a writer's body of work rather than a single novel."
