Vengeful Creditor | Chinua Achebe Biography
Albert Chinualumoga Achebe (Chinua Achebe) was born in the village of Ogidi in eastern Nigeria in 1930. His parents, members of the Ibo people, were missionary teachers. By the time Achebe was fourteen, he could speak English and he was sent to study at the Government College at Umuahia, one of the best schools in West Africa. Continuing on to college, Achebe matriculated at University College, Ibadan, a new school affiliated with the University of London, and studied English literature. While in school, Achebe published stories in the University Herald, and upon graduation he decided to be a wnter. In 1954, Achebe obtained a job with the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, where he worked until the Nigerian government began persecuting the Ibo people in 1966. He then resigned and relocated to Biafra, the region in which many massacres of the Ibos were taking place.
Things Fall Apart, his first novel, appeared in 1958 and almost instantly gained renown. A portrait of traditional village life in Nigeria at the beginning of the colonial era, it reminded Nigerians about their heritage at a time when independence from British rule was imminent. In the novel, Achebe told Nigeria Magazine, he tried to remind his nation, and all Africans, that they ''did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans; that their societies were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty, that they had poetry and, above all, that they had dignity."
Achebe followed Things Fall Apart with two other novels about the meeting of the British colonial and the Nigerian indigenous cultures, No Longer At Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964). Both explore the waning colonial days of the country and its independence from British rule. In his other novels, he has examined issues related to self-rule and to the corruption and mismanagement that have often characterized the Nigerian government as well as many other African governments.
Although Achebe is primarily known as a novelist, he is a master of all forms of writing. During the two and a half years of the Biafran civil war that began in 1967, Achebe was not inclined to concentrate on long fiction. He did write poetry, much of which was later published in the collections Beware, Soul Brother, and Other Poems (1971) and Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems (1973). He also produced a number of short stories, many of which—including "Vengeful Creditor"—appear in his 1972 collection Girls at War, and Other Stories. Achebe has since published several stories for children and collections of essays. He returned to the novel in 1988 with the publication of Anthills of the Savannah. Set in an imaginary African country, it tells the story of three childhood friends who all rise to positions of political power. Emeritus professor at the University of Nigeria since the early 1970s, Achebe has also held a number of visiting fellowships and professorships at universities in the United States and England.
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