Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1) Things Fall Apart question


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What are you decolonizing your bookshelf with?
KA Timbuktu KA Dec 01, 2022 12:41PM
Well, I'm decololizing my bookshelf with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Achebe wrote the book to fill what he called "the gap on my bookshelf.



I read this back in the mid-90s when I was in university studying African politics. I remember that I enjoyed reading it and was moved by it, and the book has come with me as I've moved around to different cities and towns because I've always intended to re-read it. I haven't yet but I still intend to. Your question has reminded me that it's still there, waiting to be read again.


I have this as one of my all-time favorites. I, too, read it at University as part of a required reading class (back in 1970 or 1971). I was moved by it to the point that it had a huge impact on my life.
I re-read it every 5-10 years as a reminder.


great book !!


Great book as everyone is saying. IF I consider a journey towards 'decolonisation' - People's History of the USA (H. Zinn) actually comes to mind. When I read that and heard the stories of worker struggles, workers dying in garment factories as they were locked in - it made me rethink how I perceived my country in contrast to those of the colonisers - the West. I don't know if you have that, but anyone in the Indian subcontinent may have heard someone saying it is thanks to the Brits that we have railroads - a real failure of the imagination due to the gap in understanding of history. Zinn's book is for USA which is not my country but it helped see how imperialism works and that there are clusters in the ex-colonies who gladly carry on the colonisers' work.

I read Orientalism last year - that's a must read to decolonise one's mind.

I also read a 1950's fiction set in British India written by a British coloniser/soldier about a revolt that challenged them That was not decolonising literature per se, but I think it is worth reading nonetheless to understand the mindset.


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