Biography

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930.

He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centres of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan.

His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. Achebe joined the Biafran Ministry of Information and represented Biafra on various diplomatic and fund-raising missions. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad. For more than 15 years he was the Carles P. Stevenson Jr Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College; he then became the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.

Chinua Achebe wrote more than 20 books - novels, short stories, essays and collections of poetry - including Things Fall Apart (1958), which has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 50 languages; Arrow of God (1964); Beware, Soul Brother and Other Poems (1971), winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize; Anthills of the Savannah (1987), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction; Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays (1988); and Home and Exile (2000).

Chinua Achebe received numerous honours from around the world, including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as honorary doctorates from more than 30 colleges and universities. He was also the recipient of Nigeria's highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize. He died on 22nd March 2013.

Bibliography

The Education of a British-Protected Child
Collected Poems
Home and Exile
The Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essaya
Anthills of the Savannah
African Short Stories
The Trouble with Nigeria
The Drum
The Flute
Morning Yet on Creation Day
How the Leopard Got His Claws
Girls at War and other stories
Beware, Soul Brother and Other Poems
A Man of the People
Chike and the River
Arrow of God
No Longer At Ease
Things Fall Apart

Awards

2010
Dayton Literary Peace Prize (US)
2010
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
2007
Man Booker International Prize
2002
German Booksellers Peace Prize
1996
Campion Award (US)
1987
Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist)
1975
Lotus Award for Afro-Asian Writers
1974
Commonwealth Poetry Prize
1964
New Statesman Jock Campbell Award for Commonwealth Writers
1959
Margaret Wong Memorial Prize