Chinua Achebe: New Perspectives

Power and responsibility as they affect political governance in Africa is the theme which is examined here in the works of the distinguished father of African literature. The author, a lecturer and literary critic of Commonwealth literature, identifies gross abuse of power and privilege as central to Achebe’s fiction. He looks at Achebe’s own view of the role of the African writer; the manifestation of abuse of power in his fiction; and his disillusionment with post-colonial irresponsibility in No Longer at Ease and A Man of the People. An analysis is also included of Achebe’s short stories and poems of war.