The Iconic Exit Of Chinua Achebe

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

Chinua Achebe died at exactly 11:51pm (US time), that is 4.51am (Nigerian time), on Thursday, March 21 at the Harvard University Teaching Hospital, Massachusetts, USA, aged 82. It was one death that shook the entire world as tributes came pouring in from all the continents of the world, from presidents down to paupers. 

      *Pix by Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye (2013)

For some of his admirers, the world stood still, yet for orders events moved at a frenetic pace, culminating to the Thursday, May 23 interment of the icon in his native Ogidi, Anambra State. The one-storey home of Chinua Achebe looks quite modest from the outside but it has a lift inside. The building for me captures the essence of the great progenitor of African literature: the quality of what is within is greater than any showiness outside.

 The mausoleum constructed to the side of the frontage of the building bears the heavy burden of the memory of Mother Africa in the buried remains of Professor Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, the inimitable author of Things Fall Apart. 

Achebe was interred at 4.30pm in a marble tomb in his Ikenga village ancestral home of Ogidi town in Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State. He was given an elaborate Christian funeral service at St. Philips Anglican Church, Ogidi, as opposed to the African mores he championed in his novels.

'Things Fall Apart', Achebe’s Magnum Opus, To Be Adapted For Television

In 1958, Chinua Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart, established African literature on the world stage. More than 60 years later, it remains the most widely read African novel. 

It has sold more than 20 million copies in English alone and has been translated into more than 60 languages. Time Magazine named it “One of the 100 greatest novels of all time,” and Encyclopedia Britannica, one of the “12 novels considered the greatest books ever written.” 

In 2020, as the world confronts systemic racism and battles the COVID-19 pandemic, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and his two other novels—Arrow of God, and No Longer At Ease—that make up The African Trilogy, remain relevant, profound and crucial.