Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Named One Of 50 Most Influential Books Of Last 50 Years

Prof. Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart, the classic novel by Africa’s foremost novelist Chinua Achebe, has been named one of the “fifty most influential books of the last 50 years.” 

The selection was made by a group called “SuperScholar.” Achebe’s first novel, published in 1958 and translated into more than sixty languages, is one of several novels by other world acclaimed writers. Other novels on the list include Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Achebe, who is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University in Providence, RI, is the author of five novels, several volumes of poetry as well as essay collections. His latest book, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra, will be published in September, 2012.