Novel · 1958
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
Aya Saleh · Ink & Ivy
Novel · 1958 · Nigerian · Modern
Things Fall Apart
Okonkwo's rise in Umuofia and the arrival of the missionaries.
Reading edition
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How to read it
Achebe answers Conrad by making Igbo life a complete world with its own proverbs, courts and cruelties — so that the colonial ending lands as loss, not rescue.
Selected section overview
These are selected acts, parts or episodes, not a complete chapter list. Summaries contain spoilers; descriptive headings are editorial.
Part OneUmuofia
Okonkwo's wrestling fame, his fear of his father, Ikemefuna's death — the wound at the novel's heart.
Part TwoExile in Mbanta
Seven years among his mother's kin; the missionaries take root while he is absent.
Part ThreeReturn
A changed village, the church, the District Commissioner — and a life reduced to a paragraph in someone else's book.
