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by: Chinua Achebe
Amazon.com's Price: $8.75 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 6 to 10 days
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780393932195
ISBN: 0393932192
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: December 19, 2008
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Reading Level: Young Adult
Sales Rank: 1961
Studio: W. W. Norton
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.
Amazon.com Review:
One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy: Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.
Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. --Alix Wilber
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - things fall apart
this book was awesome. it was a required reading for my world history 2 class my freshman year of college. although i am an avid reader, i probably would have never read the book on my own had dr barnes not required it for the course. if you are a lover of historically accurate books, this book is for you!
Rating:  - Yam Yam Yam Yam
!!!Spoiler Alert!!!
Yam yam yam yam, beat my wife, yam yam yam yam, kill whitey, yam yam yam yam, beat my kids, yam yammity yam.
There, you have now read things fall apart. My version costs less and takes much less time as well.
Seriously though, we read this in high school and it is one of the worst books I have ever had the misfortune of reading.
Rating: - Good Read
I read this book for the first time in high school I loved it. I found it to be detailed and I felt like I was in the village and I knew the people. The ending is extremely sad.
Rating:  - Erm....
I absolutely HATED reading this book. I respect it as a very popular piece of literature, but in truth I spent more time sounding out all of the names in this then actually reading it!
Rating: - Things Fall Apart
It's rare to find a book that can be at once so severe and so touching. This is a fantastic and emotionally charged book of a view of Africa that is not always revealed to the world in such a way in suh honest color. While Achebe clearly cares for the culture, he is not afraid to hide what is true about it. The result is a deeply moving look into the way of people and how they relate themselves to the rest of world as it changes.
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