Birth of Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe was born on 16 November 1930 in Ogidi. A Nigerian novelist, poet and critic, Achebe is regarded as the father of modern African literature in English. His first novel, Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, depicts the life of an Igbo community at the arrival of European colonizers and missionaries, and has sold millions of copies around the world. Other works include No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God and A Man of the People. He supported Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War, and after a car accident in 1990, which left him partly paralyzed, he lived and taught in the United States. He won the Man Booker International Prize in 2007.

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