As Things Fall Apart is Achebe’s first novel, there really are not any earlier related titles. No Longer at Ease (1960) can be considered a sequel, as it tells the story of Okonkwo’s grandson, who, by being educated in England, rises to a good position as a colonial civil servant only to meet his downfall when he takes a bribe. The book is narrated as a flashback and is less about the hero’s moral culpability as it is about his being caught in the complex web of circumstances and contradictions colonialism has woven since the time of his grandfather. Like his grandfather, Obi Okonkwo has serious flaws, yet unlike his grandfather, his flaw is basically his indecisiveness, which ironically prompts him to leave the twenty pounds in marked bills on his desk as he ponders his predicament. His personal life suffers from the same indecisiveness and falls apart as well when he neglects his girlfriend Clara and she undergoes a botched abortion.

Sources

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996.

Chinua Achebe, Morning Yet on Creation Day. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996.

Kofi Awoonor, The Breast of the Earth, Doubleday, 1975.

C. L. Innes and Bernth Lindfors, eds. Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe. London: Heinemann, 1979.

Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976.

G. D. Killam, The Novels of Chinua Achebe, Africana Publishing, 1969.

Charles Larson, “Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: The Archetypal African Novel” and “Characters and Modes of Characterization: Chinua Achebe, James Ngugi, and Peter Abrahams,” in The Emergence of African Fiction, revised edition, Indiana University Press, 1972, pp. 27–65, 147–66.

Bernth Lindfors, ed. Approaches to Teaching Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1991.

Don C. Ohadike, Anioma: A Social History of the Western Igbo People. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994.

Don C. Ohadike, “Igbo Culture and History” in Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996. (xix–xlix)

Eustace Palmer, The Growth of the African Novel, Heinemann, 1979.

Adrian A. Roscoe, Mother Is Gold: A Study of West African Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1971.

Victor C Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965.

Robert Wren, Achebe’s World: The Historical and Cultural Context of the Novels of Chinua Achebe. Harlow, England: Longman Studies in African Literature, 1981.

For Further Study

Chinua Achebe, “The Novelist as Teacher,” in Hope and Impediments: Selected Essays, Anchor Books, 1988, pp. 40–46. Achebe’s own explanation of the social significance of his fiction.

Edna Aizenberg, “The Third World Novel as Counterhistory: Things Fall Apart and Asturias’s Men of Maize,” in Approaches to Teaching Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart,” edited by Bernth Lindfors, Modern Language Association of America, 1991, pp. 85–90. An analysis of how Things Fall Apart revises biased colonial histories.

Ernest N. Emenyonu, “Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; A Classic Study in Colonial Diplomatic Tactlessness,” in Chinua Achebe: A Celebration, edited by Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anna Rutherford, Heinemann, 1990, pp. 83–88. An analysis of the political significance of Things Fall Apart as a critique of colonialism.

Abiola Irele, “The Tragic Conflict in the Novels of Chinua Achebe,” in Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe, edited by C. L. Innes and Bernth Lindfors, Three Continents Press, 1978, pp. 10–21. An analysis of Achebe’s use of tragedy.

Solomon O. Iyasere, “Narrative Techniques in Things Fall Apart,” in Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe, edited by C. L. Innes and Bernth Lindfors, Three Continents Press, 1978, pp. 92–110. A general introduction to the themes and narrative structure of Things Fall Apart.

Abdul JanMohamed, “Sophisticated Primitivism: The Syncretism of Oral and Literate Modes in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart,” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Vol. 15, No. 4, 1984, pp. 19–39. An analysis of how Achebe synthesizes African oral cultural traditions with English literary conventions.

Biodun Jeyifo, “Okonkwo and His Mother: Things Fall Apart and Issues of Gender in the Constitution of African Postcolonial Discourse,” in Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters, Vol. 16, No. 4, 1993, pp. 847–58. An analysis of the role of gender in Things Fall Apart.

Bernth Lindfors, “The Palm-Oil with Which Achebe’s Words are Eaten,” in African Literature Today, Vol. 1, 1968, pp. 3–18. An analysis of Achebe’s use of traditional proverbs in Things Fall Apart.

Alastair Niven, “Chinua Achebe and the Possibility of Modern Tragedy,” in Chinua Achebe: A Celebration, edited by Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anna Rutherford, Heinemann, 1990, pp. 41–50. An analysis of Achebe’s use of tragedy.

Emmanuel Obiechina, “Narrative Proverbs in the African Novel,” Research in African Literatures, Vol. 24, No. 41993, pp. 123–40. An analysis of Achebe’s use of African oral cultural traditions such as proverbs and storytelling.

Ato Quayson, “Realism, Criticism, and the Disguises of Both: A Reading of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart with an Evaluation of the Criticism Relating to It,” in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 25, No. 4, 1994, pp. 117–36. Argues that most critics have emphasized the realistic dimensions of Things Fall Apart without adequately discussing how the novel has its own biased perspective.

Joseph Swann, “From Things Fall Apart to Anthills of the Savannah: The Changing Face of History in Chinua Achebe’s Novels,” in Crisis and Creativity in the New Literatures in English, edited by Geoffrey V. Davis and Hena Maes-Jelinek, Rodopi, 1990, pp. 191–203. An analysis of how Achebe’s approach to history changes in each of his novels.