Day: March 23, 2013

Front facade of Houghton Library

Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)

“I speak softly, but I carry a big stick” joked Chinua Achebe when he began his talk at the Christopher Okigbo International Conference at Harvard in 2007. Indeed he did. His debut novel Things Fall Apart, was “hard-hitting” in bringing home to Western readers the African perspective on the social and political consequences of colonial…