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ABSTRACT
Although describing Achebe as "the father of African literature" is hyperbolic, it provides a figurative sense of his impact on the Anglophone African authors who followed him. Achebe's Things Fall Apart launched both a counterdiscursive dialogue with exemplars of the Western literary tradition and a number of ongoing intra-African authorial dialogues on themes including the effects of colonialism and patriarchy, the enduring value of African spirituality, the exploitation of tradition, and the place of proverbs and orality. One dialogue that merits closer attention for what it reveals about the deterioration of the social fabric is that of debt and repayment, which begins with the plight of Okonkwo's father, Unoka, and continues in Achebe's own work as well as that of Nwapa and Okri. The work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, famously described as "the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe," both continues and departs from these ongoing dialogues of the twentieth century.
[U]ntil the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.... Once I realized that, I had to be a writer.... It's not one person's job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail-the bravery, even, of the lions.-Chinua Achebe ("The Art of Fiction" 247-48)
With the passing of Chinua Achebe, his stature as the patriarch of modern African literature has gained traction. In their obituaries, the Guardian deemed Achebe "the father of African literature," the Mail & Guardian of South Africa called him "Africa's best-known novelist and the founding father of African fiction," and BBC News online quoted Nadine Gordimer's 2007 judgment that he was the "father of modern African literature." These accolades carry some irony, as Achebe himself "resisted that [epithet] very, very strongly" (Flood) and Wole Soyinka dismissed such a label as "literary ignorance" (SaharaReporters). Admittedly, the designation is reductive and hyperbolic.1 However, it does provide a figurative way of grasping his impact. While he was hardly alone in catalyzing the growth of modern African literature, he helped initiate a conversation among Anglophone African authors, specifically as one of the first to recount "the history of the hunt"-i.e., the "agony" and "bravery" of the Igbo people in precolonial and colonial...