ONE was not too sure if the foremost literary stylist from Nigeria and Africa foresaw his passing on so soon? With his most recent slightly vituperative literary outing titled, There Was A Country, a literary-cum-historical bombshell on the Nigerian civil war in which he lampooned the persons of certain key figures of the fratricidal bloodbath such as Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the vice chairman of the Gowon regime who propounded the theory that starvation was a legitimate weapon of war and General Yakubu Gowon, whom he accused of spearheading a genocide against the Igbos.

Following the sudden exit of Chinua Achebe, doyen of African literature,founding editor of the African Writers Series and one of the founders of the Association of Nigerian Authors, the National Executive Council of the Association of Nigerian Authors is organizing a cross-country Tribute by all its chapters of the federation in honour of her departed grand trustee.

Management, staff and students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, are in a state of mourning following the death of world renowned literary icon, Prof. Chinua Achebe.

THIS column last week was about Chinua Achebe, his works and his legacies. I knew that there will be a backlash, and had even attributed some of it to the legacies the late legend left behind.

IN the nadir of winter on Saturday, November 23, 1985, I arrived in Stockholm to investigate the neglect of African writers in the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature since its inception. I knew nobody in that sub-Arctic inclement part of our planet.

PROFESSOR Chinua Achebe, the Eagle on Iroko, the founding Father of Okike, a journal of creative writing and essays, the founding father of UwaNdigbo, another journal whose medium was Igbo while it existed, the acclaimed father of Nigerian literature, the founding editor of Nsukkascope that championed the voice of freedom at the University of Nigeria in the seventies, the eminent Emeritus Professor of English, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and the voice of cultural liberation in Africa, your mighty spirit lives on.

By Ekene Peters Cheerio to a literary icon, adieu papa. Hopefully, your demise herald your life time dream Of accord and not of havoc In Things Fall Apart, a sermon you preach Nigeria under siege, unlike Okonkwo, cowardly we watch in awe, Umunna in crises, the centre is porous, in despair we succumb Achebe came, […]

THE news about the death of Chinua Achebe hit me in a very personal way, coming exactly a fortnight of the burial of my eldest brother, Benji; as his Owerri contemporaries called my own “head of state”, Ben C. Nwigwe.

There is no doubt that Chinua Achebe, who died last week in the United States after a long residence there probably because it was better for him to live there than in Nigeria, was, by many accounts, an outstanding writer. His first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), received wide critical acclaim soon after its publication, which came in the wake of the great wave of decolonization. A year before the publication of the novel, Ghana became the first independent African country, in 1957. Things Fall Apart was published at a time when non-Western but Western educated intellectuals and cultural nationalists were looking around for indigenous cultural documents that could vindicate pre-colonial African cultures, in what the British-Indian writer, Salman Rushdie once called, in memorable phrase, “writing back to the Centre” (the West).

In this short conversation, Artistic Director of the National Troupe of Nigeria, Martin Adaji takes a look at the dramatic and theatrical potentials of Achebe’s works and concludes that the master story teller’s deft and creative use of language accounts for the successful adaptations of his two of seminal works: Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. He spoke to McPhilips Nwachukwu.

Chinua Achebe, the internationally celebrated Nigerian author, statesman and dissident who gave literary birth to modern Africa with Things Fall Apart, has died. He was 82. I was in my office when I heard of the passing of our elder, Chinua Achebe. The news shook me to the core, then I scrambled to the nearest computer pot. I was stunned there was no mistake, it was true that Chinua Achebe was no more.

When the Babanginda administration appointed Dr Walter Ofonagoro the Director General of Nigerian Television Authourity NTA, little was it known that, that simple policy decision by the new helmsman was going to inaugurate a revolutionary trend both on stage, movie and in the entire literary appreciation of one the greatest prose narratives of the last century, Things Fall Apart.

I first met Chinua Achebe in 1961 at Makerere, Kampala. His novel, Things Fall Apart, had come out two years before. I was then a second year student, the author of just one story, Mugumo, published in Penpoint, the literary magazine of the English Department. At my request, he looked at the story and made some encouraging remarks.

THE death of Africa’s foremost novelist, Prof. Chinua Achebe, continues to resonate around the world. As Vanguard, yesterday, received a tribute from one of Africa’s versatile writers, Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a message from the BBC and a newsletter that South Africa remembers Chinua Achebe.

THE Executive Secretary of National Institute of Cultural Orientation (NICO), Dr. Barclays Foubiri Ayakoroma, has described the death of Nigeria’s literary icon and author of many novels, Prof. Chinua Achebe, as a tragedy to Nigeria and a big loss to the writers’ community African and, indeed, all over the world.