Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force,
this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its
traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the
familiar "Me, white brother" genre. Written by a Nigerian African
trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story
of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms
of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior,
father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into
the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers,
teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One
must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the
talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of
incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the
white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in
despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he,
alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs
himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the
missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give
Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of
the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. This book sings with the
terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was
valor. (Kirkus Reviews)
One of a series of fiction titles for schools. Okonkwo, a man of
the Ibo tribe in Nigeria at the end of the last century, is a
person of substance, character and promise, but he and his people
are doomed to be destroyed - both from within the tribe and by the
arrival of the white man.
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