s Fall Apart at 40 
PERHAPS it was a day like 
any ether. Perhaps he had 
to write it by candle-light. 
Tribute by 
Toyin 
Adewale We certainly know he 
wrote it in long-hand. 
Computers where still a luxury and today's 
writer-friendly electronic notebooks were 
still to come. 
On the auspicious day Chinua Achebe began 
the writing of Things Fall Apart, he could only have hoped 
the manuscript would not gather dust in his drawers. He must 
have hoped for interested publishers who would be willing to 
risk their money on an unknown writer from a colonised 
Nigeria. 
His dream bore fruit in 1958 when Things FaZ/Aparfwas 
published. Proudly holding the book in his hands, he could not 
have dreamed that it would sell one million copies by 1978. 
Nor could he have foreseen that Things Fall Apart would 
become a double-edged machete clearing the heartlands of 
Letters for African literature. Beyond literature, Things Fall Apart 
(picture left) 
'Ofconfcwo' in 
the original 
production by 
the London 
International 
Festival of 
Theatre and the 
West Yorkshire 
Playhouse. The 
production was 
manned in 
association with 
the Royal 
National Theatre 
Studio and 
Collective 
Artistes, Nigeria, 
supported by 
The Performance 
Studio 
Workshop. 
(below) Music 
rehearsal before 
the West 
Yorkshire 
Playhouse 
production of 
colonisation. 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Things Fall 
Apart1 at Leeds. 
raised a salute, an affirmation for 
Africa and carved a turf on which we could fight the 
battle of the mind • that arena where our ancestors were 
vanquished with whiskey, mirrors and beads - against 
Acclaimed by critics and readers all over the world as a 
classic of modern literature, Things FallAparth acknowledged 
to have heralded the arrival of modern African writing. Buoyed 
by the awesome, enthusiastic response to Things Fall Apart, 
Vol. 2/No. 3 QLENDORAoi..
Heinemann and other publishers would go on to publish many 
mere African voices. 
In Things Fall Apart, Achebe ignited his eventual rhetoric 
fanning it into flame in Arrow of God, No Longer At Ease, A 
Man of the People and his meditative assessments on the African 
condition in The Trouble with Nigeria. No other book assures 
the Achebe legacy like Things Fall Apart and no reader forgets 
the encounter with Okonkwo, Obierika, Ikemefuna and those 
deliciously transliterated proverbs, 'the palm oil with which 
words are eaten'. Things Fall Apart is the towering platform of 
the Achebe canon, the full wine from which readers will never 
tire of slaking their thirst. 
The riveting story of an African village and its hero, 
Okonkwo, caught in the web of destiny, in the tide of change, 
in the killer-grip of colonialism; it has sparked a train of 
creativity, transmuting Things Fall Apart into different media on 
stage and in film by culture practitioners. Unforgettable are the 
Hollywood feature film by the Calpenny company starring 
Johnson Sekka and the late Orlando Martins and the thirteenepisode 
serial produced by the Nigerian Television Authority. 
Controversy however greeted the latter production which was 
considered a defective adaptation in certain quarters. Achebe 
reportedly disowned the production. 
This is not surprising as world classics and indeed original 
literary materials are prone to distortions and transmutations. 
Every artist, every reader, every director chooses his/her own 
truth in a work and interprets his/her own meaning in the light 
of individual perception. The most recent adaptation of Things 
Fall Apart for the stage is the version by Biyi Bandele, the 
prolific, Nigerian writer based in London. Directed by Chuck 
Mike, founding director of the Performance Studio workshop, 
with a multi-cultural cast, the Bandele adaptation would play to 
enthusiastic audiences in the UK, Europe and America hopefully 
in February 1999. It has received rave reviews describing 
it as 'magnificent, groping, haunting and utterly essential 
theatre. 
Sadly, the warm embrace expanded to African literature 
on the birth of Things Fall Aparfhas since cooled. The economic 
decline of several African states has made publishing (except 
for textbooks and self-serving biographies) an unattractive 
business venture for most publishers. Publishers outside Africa 
no longer consider Africa a significant market worth investing 
in. The economics of the bottomline profit barely provides 
publishers like Heinemann.. Longman and Macmillan, a presence 
in Africa. The business mergers and downsizing trends in 
the world economy have worsened the scenario. And several 
young and new writers in Africa today are forced to retreat into 
vanity publishing rather than watch their manuscripts gather 
dust over the years. 
But Things Fall Apart strides on, secure in its pioneering 
stature in contemporary African literature, influencing different 
generations of African writing and African writers, emboldening 
them to speak with a voice that is utterly African, as we see in 
The Voice by Gabriel Okara and Efuru by Flora Nwapa. Things 
Fall Apart is a central feature on the Nigerian school curricula 
and now the world over. Recently it was also included in the 
prestigious Millenium Library Project celebrating seminal classics 
from around the world. 
As the curtain is drawn on the Twentieth century, Things 
Fall Apart remains a beacon, a sign-post to a new millenium, 
guiding star to new generations of writers that classics can spew 
forth from a pen unafraid to dream. GR