Things Fall Apart

Does that make sense as a view? My goodness, yeah.

So Francis Fukuyama's concept is actually relevant with... a book my daughter is reading, and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

And looking at the nodding, you're both familiar with that.

And looking at the nodding, you...

So what happens when the external world doesn't just ask for your loyalty but demands the total surrender of your identity?

That is the terrifying reality Chinua Achebe explores in his monumental 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart.

This one is just so powerful.

It really is.

We navigated the cutthroat 19th century Hong Kong trade routes in Tai-Pan.

We examined the profound internal journey of a philosopher swordsman in Musashi.

And felt the agonizing impact of colonial erasure in pre-colonial Nigeria with Things Fall Apart.

We analyzed divided loyalties in British India with The Far Pavilions.

the right to tell the story.

Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, is not just a reply to European novels.

It is the construction of a narrative authority that does not ask permission.

He reconstructs Igbo life with a density of proverbs, seasonal rituals, and moral debates that totally refuse the colonial travelogue's blankness.

But the truth is, we were still practicing forms of slavery.

And if you were to use a piece of historical fiction like Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, in it, he talks about a child who was taken, basically, you could consider as a prisoner of war.

Edwin was then murdered.

Now, it was against the laws of their community for him as the surrogate father to have taken part in that, but not in the fact that that child was that young man was murdered.

They're the books that I love.

Then the last book I will talk about is a Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.

Again, a wonderful book.

Yeah.

She did not think that Africans could be characters in books.

But when she was ten years old, she read a book called Things Fall Apart.

Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe wrote this famous book.

You may have heard another Spotlight program about Chinua Achebe.

So we're starting off with my book, Are You Still Watching? You don't have to have read it before you come along, although the book comes out on the 10th of September and the literary salon after chapter book club begins on the 11th of September.

And yes, so it will be a monthly event after this one where we're discussing Are You Still Watching? Next month, we will be discussing Chinua Achebe's book, things fall apart, especially when we consider colonialism and just how, I just think that that book especially, it's beautiful, it's exemplary when you are looking at something that's essentially short form, but carry so much in terms of observations and critique of society.

So, and how if Chinua Achebe wanted to write that sort of story today, how publishers would say no.

So that's what we'll be discussing next month.