Chinua Achebe

Born in Ogidi in 1930 under colonial rule, Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe grew up between Igbo tradition and missionary Christianity, then studied at what is now the University of Ibadan, where he turned fiercely against the way Western literature depicted Africa. After graduation he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service in Lagos, and in 1958 published Things Fall Apart - the first in what became the African Trilogy, completed by No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964). At Heinemann he launched the African Writers Series, galvanizing careers like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Flora Nwapa, and defended writing in English as a way to reach the widest audience. When Biafra broke from Nigeria in 1967 he became an ambassador for the breakaway region, appealing to Europe and the Americas as civil war ravaged the population; after Nigeria retook Biafra in 1970 he grew disillusioned with the corruption he saw in political life. A 1990 car crash left him partially paralyzed, and he spent his final decades teaching in the United States - nineteen years at Bard College, then at Brown University, where he held the chair in African studies until his death in 2013.