One of Africa’s greatest storyteller Chinua Achebe would have been 87 today. To celebrate the legend, google put up a Google Doodle to honor him.
Here are things you did not know about Chinua Achebe.
- He was born in Ogidi in 1930 to an Igbo family, Chinua was the studious son of an evangelical priest.
- He completed English studies at the University of Ibadan in four years instead of the standard five.
- In 1958, he published his first and most widely read novel, Things Fall Apart. The novel portrays the clash of cultures that took place when Christian missionaries and Western colonials encountered traditional African societies in the 19th century
- In 1961, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation and married Christie Okoli. They had four children together.
- He co-founded in 1967 Citadel Press with renowned writer Christopher Okigbo to publish children’s books.
- In 1990 Achebe was in a crash in Nigeria that left him paralysed and in a wheelchair. In the same year, he moved to the US and taught at Bard College for 15 years.
- In 2005, Time magazine listed Things Fall Apart in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
- Achebe also won many literary awards, from the inaugural Nigerian National Merit Award in 1979 to the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction in 2007.
- In 2009, Achebe joined Brown University as a professor of African Studies.
- Chinua Achebe died in Boston on March 21, 2013, at the age of 82.
