USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obiwu on:The World of Chinua Achebe: Illustrissimo of African Literature

"Achebe's enduring legacy, however, does not lie at the level of the imaginary alone. No other individual African writer has excited the consciousness of generations of Nigerian and African youth more than Achebe. His discovery of African literature was arguably his second best contribution to the world. The path-breaking influence of his Things Fall Apart and his founding editorship of the Heinemann African Writers Series were instrumental to the inauguration of African literature as a body of knowledge and an academic discipline. Achebe's individual writing alone – his fiction, poetry, essays, and autobiography – has produced generations of lively intellectual pursuits and thousands of academic papers, theses, dissertations, books, and boundless careers in scholarship, creative writing, and related fields across the arts, humanities, education, social sciences, medicine, and physics. Things Fall Apart alone has reportedly sold over ten million copies and has been translated into over fifty world languages. No other single individual has made more contribution to the development and generation of postcolonial discourse than Chinua Achebe. Because of his work, African literature – which he colossally bestrode for fifty-five years – is today a multibillion dollar enterprise in global grants and academia, travel and research, publishing and marketing, politics and popular culture, and allied professions on five continents."

- Obiwu

Please, read on at: http://saharareporters.com/article/world-chinua-achebe-illustrissimo-african-literature-obiwu

- Ikhide