Growing up as a Christian allowed him to observe his world more clearly, he wrote. Later, in an autobiographical essay entitled Named for Victoria, Queen of England, he told how, like Queen Victoria, he 'lost his Albert'. As founding editor of the influential Heinemann African writers series, he oversaw the publication of more than 100 texts that made good writing by Africans available worldwide in affordable editions.īorn in the traditional Igbo village of Ogidi, eastern Nigeria, some 40 years after missionaries first arrived in the region, Achebe was christened Albert Chinualumogu by his Christian convert parents. They also create a host of vivid characters who seek in varying ways to take control of their history. The five novels and the short stories he published between 19 provide a chronicle of Nigeria's troubled history since the beginning of British colonial rule.

His creation of a hybrid that combined oral and literary modes, and his refashioning of the English language to convey Igbo voices and concepts, established a model and an inspiration for other novelists throughout the African continent. The publication of his first novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958 not only contested European narratives about Africans but also challenged traditional assumptions about the form and function of the novel.

Chinua Achebe, who has died aged 82, was Africa's best-known novelist and the founding father of African fiction.

Achebe books