Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He is currently the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies at Brown University. Achebe has written over twenty books–novels, short stories, essays and collections of poetry–and has received numerous honors from around the world, including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as honorary doctorates from more than thirty colleges and universities. He is also the recipient of Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction. “Those Who Answered to Abraham,” an excerpt of Achebe’s Chike and the River appeared in Guernica in August, 2011.

In an excerpt from his long-awaited memoir, the inventor of the post-colonial African novel in English discusses his origins as a writer and the seeds of revolt against the British Empire.