No longer at ease

CHINA ACHEBE published Things Fall Apart in 1958. It was followed by No Longer at Ease (AWS 3) and Arrow of God (AWS 16). A Man of the People (AWS 31) aroused widespread interest on publi- cation at the time of the January 1966 coup because of its prophetic ending. The effect of his novels, and of his editorship of the African Writers Series has had a dramatic impact on the development of the literature of Africa. Some of the stories in Girls at War (AWS 100) and some of the poems in Beware Soul Brother (AWS 120) are set in the war. His essays were published in 1975 under the title Morning Yet on Creation Day (Heinemann). He was educated at Government Coll- ege, Umuahia and University College, Ibadan. By the time he left the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1966 he had became Director of External Broadcasting. Since the war he has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut. He has now returned to the University of Nigeria. Among many recent honours has been the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Languages Association of America and of Doctorates at the University of Stirling and Southampton. He has followed Heinrich Boll, the Nobel prizewinner, as the second recipent of the Scottish Arts Council's Neil Gunn Fellowship. Obi Okonkwo is a young Eastern Nigerian, a promising representative of his generation, the bright boy of his village, who returns from his studies in England to try to live up to the expectations of his family and his tribe and at the same time to breathe the heady atmosphere of Lagos. As a civil servant Obi holds a respected job; as the fiancé of Clara, the girl he met on the boat, he has much to look forward to : nevertheless Obi falls victim to the corruption of the capital. Like its predecessor, Things Fall Apart (whose hero was Obi's powerful grand. father), No Longer at Ease tells the story of an African tragically under pressure from a changing world.