Chinua Achebe
Nigerian · 1930–2013
Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic widely regarded as the father of modern African literature. His fiction restored dignity and complexity to African culture by telling its stories from within, challenging the distortions of colonial narrative.
Wikipedia ↗“The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”
English
“There is no story that is not true. The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”
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“When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.”
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“Art is, and always was, at the service of man. Our ancestors created their myths and told their stories for a human purpose. Any good story, any good novel, should have a message, should have a purpose.”
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“People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that is the time to do something about it, not when it is up to your neck.”
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“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
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An African proverb cited by Achebe in his 1994 Paris Review interview, not from Things Fall Apart.
“The novelist teaches the reader that the past was not as simple as it might appear. He reveals that the world is complex and that there is no single perspective that contains the whole truth.”
English