John Baker’s Blog

Peter Monaghan in The Chronicle Review looks back at the fate of a first novel:

Since William Heinemann Ltd. first issued it in London, the novel has sold about 11 million copies in some 50 countries and as many languages. (This month Anchor Books will issue a 50th-aniversary edition.) In the United States, in an era of multiculturalism, it has become a fixture on college and high-school reading lists — for Americans, the quintessential novel about Africa.

and the author’s words are characteristically modest:

Fifty years on, Achebe clearly takes special pride in the novel. When he started it, he says, he had no experience as a writer. But “I knew that there was a story that was needed, that was waiting to come. And so I just … well, one was sufficiently naïve to think it was going to be possible.”

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