The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. It was met with critical acclaim from the TLS and The Observer, and launched the Heinemann’s African Writers Series, of which Achebe become the first advisory editor. The hardback edition was published with a print run of 2,000, without the publishers touching a word of it. The firm’s educational department, which sold books to Africa, decided to publish the book after a glowing eleven-word report from their reader Professor Donald MacRae, which read “This is the best novel I have read since the war”. It was when the manuscript reached Alan Hill, a publishing innovator at William Heinemann, that Things Fall Apartfinally took off. Luckily, Angela Beattie, Achebe’s boss at NBC, turned up at the agency’s office demanding that they post back the typed version to its author in Lagos.Īcclaim and Heinemann’s Africa Writers Series Achebe’s handwritten manuscript could have also been lost forever after he posted it to a typing agency and they refused to return it. Chinua Achebe found his work rejected by publishing houses on the grounds that many believed fiction written by an African had no financial prospects. The 1950s represented a time when it was near impossible for an African writer to have their work taken seriously by a London publisher. The school grounds could have been the inspiration behind the ‘evil forest’ in Things Fall Apart, a former burial ground for outcasts in the backwoods of Umudike-Ibeku. Chinua Achebe started his literary career as an editor of one of the school’s magazines, The Eastern Star. The colonial boy’s school Government College, Umuahia, was modelled along the lines of Eton, and had its pupils reading Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte and Thomas Hardy. The importance of Government College, UmuahiaĬhinua Achebe attended secondary school with many would-be authors: Christopher Okigbo, Elechi Amadi, and Chike Momah to name just a few. To celebrate the upcoming anniversary, we thought we would share some anecdotes from the James Currey imprint archives about the publication of one of the most important books in African Literature. Booker Prize winner Ben Okri and our very own James Currey, the man behind Heinemann’s African Writers Series, were in attendance. The 60th anniversary of the publication of Achebe’s masterpiece was celebrated in style with a marathon reading of all 24 chapters at London’s Southbank Centre. Ask a person on the street if they have ever read a book by an African author, and they are most likely to answer with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The landmark novel, which follows the life of a fictional clan in pre-colonial Nigeria, has been translated into 60 languages and has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. On 17 June, 1958, the hardback edition of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was published by the London-based publishing house William Heinemann.
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