THREE MORE NOVELS SET IN AFRICA

Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe (1958) LLong recognised aas a milestone in AAfrican literature, this rremarkable novel by tthe Nigerian writer CChinua Achebe, who ddied in 2013, is as grippingg today as it was when it was first published 60 years ago. Set in the 19th century, it tells the story of Okonkwo, a wrestling champion and leader of his Igbo people, who is a tragic witness to the demoralising impact of the arrival of white colonialists on his countrymen and culture. Segu Maryse Condé (1987) OOriginally written in FFrench, this epic tale sset in the African kkingdom of Segu oopens in the final yyears of the 18th ccentury. It follows the fortunesf of Dousika TTraore, an adviserd to the king, and the fate of his sons through the decades to come. Tribal warfare, the clash of cultures, the advance of Islam and the beginnings of western imperialism all play their parts in a novel of tremendous scope and ambition. Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006) TThis powerful, Orange PPrize-winning novel is sset amid the horrors oof the Nigerian civil wwar in the 1960s. The eevents of the war are sseen through the eyes ofo a number of vividly realisedlid characters,h from Ugwu, the teenager employed as a houseboy by a charismatic university professor, to Olanna, the beautiful and well-educated Igbo woman who is the professor’s mistress. As civil war unfolds, Adichie’s characters find themselves swept up by historical forces far beyond their control.