World-renowned Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe died on March 21 in Boston. He was eighty-two. His first and most famous novel, Things Fall Apart, was first published in 1958, and it has since been translated into fifty languages and sold over ten million copies worldwide. He was a professor at Bard College in New York for many years, and most recently he taught at Brown University as a visiting professor.

Through his writing and academic and political work, Achebe was a leading voice in the discussion of colonialism and its effects on African cultures. He was also seen as a champion of marginalized voices in literature. His accolades from over the years include the Man Booker International Prize and over thirty honorary degrees from universities around the globe.

The LA Times’s David Ulin wrote, “[Achebe] offered permission to half a century of writers, African or otherwise, declaring forcefully and without apology that literature can encompass any and all stories, that everyone should have a stake. It’s no stretch to suggest that without Achebe we would be a literary culture with fewer voices… less of a sense of how wide a world writers can (and should) engage.”

Sources: Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-remembering-chinua-achebe-a-writer-who-connected-us-to-the-world-20130322,0,3887910.story

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/chinua-achebe-dead-dies-things-fall-apart_n_2931437.html