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March 25, 2013

Nigerian Literary Icon Chinua Achebe Dies at 82 
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The Nigerian literary icon Chinua Achebe has died at the age of 82.
Achebe’s novels, including the highly celebrated "Things Fall Apart,"
provided a counterpoint to the colonial depiction of Africa and helped
give voice to a continent. In 2008, during a celebration of his birthday
at the Library of Congress, Achebe was asked how the groundbreaking
novel, published in 1958, had changed him.

Chinua Achebe: "The process of writing 'Things Fall Apart' actually
changed my life, because I had to invent the language of that story. It
was not something that anybody was teaching anywhere, the conversation
between Igbo and English. That had not — and so I had to make it
up as I went along."

Achebe died in Boston after a brief illness.

 

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