Set in the Ibo heartland of eastern Nigeria, one of Africa’s best-known writers describes the conflict between old and new in its most poignant aspect–the personal struggle between father and son.,Anthropologist and journalist Blank gives a new perspective to the 3,000-year-old Hindu classic, retelling the ancient tale while following the course of Rama’s journey through present-day India and Sri Lanka.,Here, collected for the first time in stunning Everyman’s Library hardcover, are the three internationally acclaimed classic novels that comprise what has come to be known as Chinua Achebe’s “African Trilogy.” With an intorduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Beginning with the best-selling Things Fall Apart—on the heels of its fiftieth anniversary—The African Trilogy captures a society caught between its traditional roots and the demands of a rapidly changing world. Achebe’s most famous novel introduces us to Okonkwo, an important member of the Igbo people, who cannot adjust as his village is colonized by the British. In No Longer at Ease we meet his grandson, Obi Okonkwo, a young man who was sent to a university in England and has returned, only to clash with the ruling elite to which he now believes he belongs. Arrow of God tells the story of Ezuelu, the chief priest of several Nigerian villages, and his battle with Christian missionaries. In these masterful novels, Achebe brilliantly sets universal tales of personal and moral struggle in the context of the tragic drama of colonization. Everyman’s Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Everyman’s Library Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author’s life and times.,This innovative book provides an original approach to the analysis of the representation of myth, ritual, and ‘magic’ in African literature. Emphasizing the ambivalent nature of the sacred, it advances work on the religious dimension of canonical African texts and attends to the persistence of pre-colonial cultures in postcolonial spaces.,“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.,Obi Okenkwo, a Nigerian country boy, is determined to make it in the city. Educated in England, he has new, refined tastes which eventually conflict with his good resolutions and lead to his downfall.,The first aim of this book is to inform and educate Umuchu boys and girls, both at home and abroad, about the origins and customs of Umuchu town. This book may, also, be of interest to students of history, especially of Igbo towns and villages of which Umuchu is a typical example. As the years roll by and more and more people begin to live in cities, they will soon be unable to trace out their former towns or where they originated from. It is the duty of those of us who saw or heard these things, first hand, to pass on what we saw, heard, and learnt from our own fathers, to our own children who we, hope, will, also, pass these on to their children. For he or she, who grows up, without knowing his or her origins and customs, is like a stranger walking in the dark.,’There is much to admire in this intriguing, ambitious, immersive book’ Literary Review The gods are abandoning the earth, tempted by other worlds where they can live in peace. Only a few keep an interest in mortals. In their place, darker, more ancient forces are wakening… Silvius is given a task by a dying centaur. The dark god Python is rising and massing an army of immense power. The only thing that can save the world is the Arrow of Apollo – but it has been split into two. Silvius and his friend Elissa must travel to the land of their sworn enemies, the Achaeans. Meanwhile, Tisamenos is facing his own dangers in Achaea. A plot is afoot against him and his father, and it falls to him to stop it. When Silvius, Elissa and Tisamenos meet, they enter a final, terrifying race to bring together the pieces of the Arrow and use it to lay Python low once more.
