Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo has risen from a childhood marked by his father’s debts to become a respected farmer, wrestler and warrior in the Igbo community of Umuofia. His success rests on discipline, status and a fierce rejection of anything he associates with weakness. When an accidental killing forces him into exile, the punishment separates him from the titles and ambitions through which he has defined himself, while changes beyond his control begin to reach the villages.

On Okonkwo’s return, Christian missionaries and British colonial officials have established new centres of religious and political authority. Converts, courts and administrative power divide the community, and Okonkwo’s determination to restore the old order pushes him towards isolation and disaster. Achebe presents late nineteenth-century Igbo life from within, giving equal weight to family, law, ritual, debate and conflict before tracing how colonial intervention destabilises that world.