Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart because he was furious at how Joseph Conrad and other Western writers had depicted Africa — as a dark, primitive backdrop for European stories. His novel told an African story from the inside, in English, with the complexity and dignity that colonial literature had denied an entire continent. It became the most widely read African novel in history and changed which stories the world considered worth telling.

This episode traces Achebe from his Igbo childhood in colonial Nigeria through his Cambridge education, the writing of Things Fall Apart, the Biafran War that nearly killed him, and the decades of literary and political engagement that followed.

• Achebe’s Igbo childhood in colonial Nigeria and the Western literature that enraged him
• The writing of Things Fall Apart and the decision to reclaim African narrative in the colonizer’s language
• The Biafran War, the refugee years, and the political writing that followed
• The Conrad essay, the Nobel near-miss, and Achebe’s lasting impact on world literature