‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe: Africa's story did not begin with colonialism

What you need to know:

I first read this novel in high school as a literature requirement. My attention was on themes, symbolism, setting and figurative language. I simply wanted to pass my exams.Reading it again as an adult felt like reading a different book. It is only now that I appreciate why Things Fall Apart is regarded as one of the most important novels ever written about Africa.

How would Africa look today if it had never been colonised? What would our cultures look like? What would we believe about ourselves? And how different would our understanding of the people who colonised us be if they had never convinced us that our ways were primitive and that they had come to bring us civilisation?

These were the questions on my mind as I reread Things Fall Apart, first published in 1958.

I first read this novel in high school as a literature requirement. My attention was on themes, symbolism, setting and figurative language. I simply wanted to pass my exams.