Postcolonial Literature

Classic Literature III: The Modern Era

Course 3 · Chapter 7 · Postcolonial Literature

This site's own World History III course covers decolonization as a political and military process. This chapter covers the same real historical moment from inside literature itself — and two of its major writers reached genuinely opposite conclusions about the very language they should write in.

Chinua Achebe: Writing Back in the Colonizer's Own Language

Things Fall Apart, 1958

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) was Nigerian. Things Fall Apart (1958) depicts Igbo village life in the Umuofia clan, centered on the protagonist Okonkwo, and the arrival of British colonialism and Christian missionaries. Achebe wrote it in English — but deliberately infused that English with Igbo proverbs, oral-tradition rhythms, and vocabulary, a documented act of "indigenizing" the colonizer's own language rather than rejecting it outright. Achebe himself put it memorably: "proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten."

A Title Borrowed From Yeats

The novel's own title directly quotes W. B. Yeats' 1919 poem "The Second Coming" — "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" — also used as the novel's epigraph.

A deliberate inversion, not just a borrowed line — scholars note Achebe inverts Yeats's own imagery: the poem's vague, apocalyptic "rough beast" becomes, in Achebe's novel, the West and imperialism itself, threatening an African civilization Yeats never imagined as the subject.

A Landmark's Real Legacy

Things Fall Apart has sold over 20 million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages — the exact figures vary somewhat by source, but this range is well-supported and makes it one of the most widely read works of African literature in any language.

"An Image of Africa": A Real, Still-Debated Critique

A 1975 Lecture That Reshaped a Canon

In February 1975, Achebe delivered a Chancellor's Lecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, later published as the essay "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." He called Joseph Conrad "a thoroughgoing racist," arguing that Conrad's 1899 novella reduces Africa to "a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity." This is genuinely a landmark critical intervention in postcolonial studies — real, and still actively debated, not a settled academic consensus.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: A Different Answer to the Same Question

From English to Gikuyu

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Kenyan, wrote his early novels and plays — including Weep Not, Child — in English, then made a real, documented later commitment to writing exclusively in his own native language, Gikuyu, a decision made even before his own imprisonment. His 1986 book Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature argues that abandoning colonial languages entirely is itself a genuine act of decolonization and resistance.

🔮 The Same Colonial Language Question, Two Opposite Answers This course has traced a vernacular-language thread since Course 2 — kana, Tuscan, Middle English, baihua, Wordsworth's plain diction. Every one of those cases moved in the same direction: away from a prestige standard, toward a "lesser" language. Achebe and Ngũgĩ face the exact same colonial-language pressure and respond in genuinely opposite directions — Achebe transforming English from within, Ngũgĩ rejecting it outright — a real, documented ideological split between two major writers answering the identical question differently.

Imprisonment and a Novel Written on Toilet Paper

Ngũgĩ was detained without trial from 31 December 1977 to 12 December 1978, at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, following his co-written Gikuyu-language play Ngaahika Ndeenda ("I Will Marry When I Want").

Writing under real, physical constraint — while imprisoned, Ngũgĩ wrote his first Gikuyu-language novel, Caitaani Mũtharaba-Inĩ ("Devil on the Cross"), on prison-issued toilet paper, for lack of any other writing material available to him — a striking, well-documented act of literary defiance carried out under genuine political persecution.

Two Postcolonial Writers, Side by Side

AchebeNgũgĩ wa Thiong'o
CountryNigeriaKenya
Language choiceEnglish, indigenized with Igbo proverbs and rhythmsA deliberate shift to Gikuyu, rejecting English
Key workThings Fall Apart (1958)Caitaani Mũtharaba-Inĩ / Devil on the Cross (written in prison)
Real political consequenceA landmark, still-debated critique of the colonial literary canonDetention without trial, 1977–78

Questions to Sit With

Reflection 1

Achebe transformed English from within; Ngũgĩ rejected it outright. Which approach do you find more persuasive as a genuine act of resistance to colonialism, and why?

Reflection 2

Achebe's critique of Conrad remains genuinely contested rather than settled. What do you think it takes for a critical argument like this to eventually become uncontroversial consensus, if it ever does?

Reflection 3

Ngũgĩ wrote an entire novel on toilet paper while imprisoned for his own writing. What does an act of literary creation under that kind of real physical and political constraint tell you about why some writers keep writing regardless of the cost?

Quick Reference — Chapter 7

  • Achebe (1930–2013) — Things Fall Apart (1958), Igbo village life confronting British colonialism, written in indigenized English
  • The title is a direct, deliberately inverted allusion to Yeats' "The Second Coming"; the novel has sold 20+ million copies in 50+ languages
  • Achebe's 1975 "An Image of Africa" essay, calling Conrad "a thoroughgoing racist," remains a landmark, still-debated critical intervention
  • Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o chose the opposite path — abandoning English for Gikuyu, argued for in Decolonising the Mind (1986)
  • Detained without trial 1977–78 after his Gikuyu play; wrote his first Gikuyu novel on toilet paper while imprisoned

What's Next

Chapter 8: The African American Literary Tradition — Morrison and Baldwin.