frican authors are arguably not as well known as those from North American andEuropean countries. However, Africa is home to many gifted and acclaimed writers.Among the most important voices from Africa are Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka,and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Many of these authors’ works deal with cultural customs andhistory. Some works express their criticism of colonialism.Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist and poet. He began publishing his writing in thelate 1950s. Over his career, he has written six novels, dozens of essays and commentaries,collections of short stories and poems, and even children’s books. The bulk of his workdeals with African politics, precolonial African society, and the repercussions of colonialismon Africa, which he views as overwhelmingly negative.Achebe’s most acclaimed novel,Things Fall Apart ,was surprisingly his first andwas published in 1958. Since its first printing, it has sold ten million copies and has beentranslated into fifty languages, making Achebe the most translated African author of alltime! The work is widely read in academia and has been cited by Norway, England, theUnited States, and Africa as one of the top 100 novels of all time. It tells the story ofan African village during the 1800s and focuses on Okonkwo, one of the leaders of thecommunity. The village exists in relative harmony and order, until the appearance of a whiteman threatens their religion and traditional way of life. The change proves to be too muchfor Okonkwo, and ends very tragically. The work is representative of Achebe’s recurringthemes of African politics and the effects of colonialism, which appear frequently in his late