![]() ![]() The school grounds could have been the inspiration behind the ‘evil forest’ in Things Fall Apart, a former burial ground for outcasts in the backwoods of Umudike-Ibeku. Chinua Achebe started his literary career as an editor of one of the school’s magazines, The Eastern Star. The colonial boy’s school Government College, Umuahia, was modelled along the lines of Eton, and had its pupils reading Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte and Thomas Hardy. The importance of Government College, UmuahiaĬhinua Achebe attended secondary school with many would-be authors: Christopher Okigbo, Elechi Amadi, and Chike Momah to name just a few. To celebrate the upcoming anniversary, we thought we would share some anecdotes from the James Currey imprint archives about the publication of one of the most important books in African Literature. ![]() Booker Prize winner Ben Okri and our very own James Currey, the man behind Heinemann’s African Writers Series, were in attendance. The 60th anniversary of the publication of Achebe’s masterpiece was celebrated in style with a marathon reading of all 24 chapters at London’s Southbank Centre. Ask a person on the street if they have ever read a book by an African author, and they are most likely to answer with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The landmark novel, which follows the life of a fictional clan in pre-colonial Nigeria, has been translated into 60 languages and has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. On 17 June, 1958, the hardback edition of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was published by the London-based publishing house William Heinemann. ![]()
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