Things Fall Apart

Achebe's 1958 founding work of modern African literature

Tradition: Twentieth-century anglophone African literature

Achebe's 1958 founding work of modern African literature — Okonkwo and Igbo society on the eve of British colonization

Things Fall Apart is Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel, the founding work of modern anglophone African literature. The novel centers on Okonkwo, a proud, ambitious Igbo warrior and yam farmer in the village of Umuofia in late-nineteenth-century southeastern Nigeria. As Okonkwo navigates the rituals of Igbo society — kinship, religion, masculinity, agriculture — the arrival of British missionaries and colonial administrators progressively destroys the traditional world. The title alludes to Yeats's "The Second Coming." Foundational for modern African literature, postcolonial studies, and the global novel tradition.