The African Trilogy

The African Trilogy follows an Igbo community across three generations as British colonial rule transforms religious authority, political power and family life. Things Fall Apart begins in the late nineteenth century with Okonkwo’s defence of Umuofia’s customs against missionaries and colonial officials. Arrow of God moves into the early colonial period, when Ezeulu’s priestly authority collides with village rivalry and the machinery of indirect rule.

No Longer at Ease brings the sequence to Lagos in the 1950s, where Okonkwo’s grandson Obi returns from England to enter the colonial civil service. Across the trilogy, Achebe connects private tragedy with the historical movement from autonomous Igbo society through conquest and administration to the approach of Nigerian independence. The books can be read separately, but together they show how colonialism alters institutions, values and the choices available to successive generations.