AFRICAN LITERATURE

The body of traditional oral and written literatures

in Afro-Asiatic and African languages together with
works written by Africans in European languages.

It includes Oral Literature called:

ORATURE - Was coined by “PIO ZIRIMU”

- This can be process or verses

PIO ZIRIMU - Ugandan Scholar - They used the

“Call and Response Technique”
 - Used by Story Teller

AFRICAN LITERATURE
 Chinua Achebe
“Father of Modern African Literature”
He made a splash with the publication of his first
novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958. Renowned as
one of the seminal works of African literature, it has
since sold more than 20 million copies and been
translated into more than 50 languages. Achebe
followed with novels such as No Longer at
Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964) and Anthills of
the Savannah (1987), and served as a faculty
member at renowned universities in the U.S. and
Nigeria. He died on March 21, 2013, at age 82, in
Boston, Massachusetts.

Short Biography of Chinua Achebe

The novel chronicles the life of Okonkwo, the leader of an
Igbo community, from the events leading up to his
banishment from the community for accidentally killing a
clansman, through the seven years of his exile, to his return,
and it addresses a particular problem of emergent Africa—
the intrusion in the 1890s of white missionaries and colonial
government into tribal Igbo society. Traditionally structured,
and peppered with Igbo proverbs, it describes the
simultaneous disintegration of its protagonist Okonkwo and
of his village. The novel was praised for its intelligent and
realistic treatment of tribal beliefs and of psychological
disintegration coincident with social unraveling.

“Things Fall Apart”