Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo's place within his Igbo community is built through work, reputation and expectations about strength. Chinua Achebe's novel allows readers to encounter social relations, ceremonies and disagreements before colonial administration and missionary activity reshape the terms of communal life.

Its achievement lies partly in the refusal to make a whole society stand still for the sake of one man's story. Readers meet a living world, full of its own arguments, humor and judgments, and watch pressure unfold at both personal and collective levels.