Chinua Achebe's such a big deal that people often call him the "father of modern African literature." He was a Nigerian writer who was one of the first to write a postcolonial novel that said, basically, "screw you" to Nigeria's British colonizers. Chances are that if you haven't read the novel, you've at least heard of it. It's called Things Fall Apart, and it was first published in 1958.

We can't talk about postcolonial literature without talking about Things Fall Apart. And that's because this work is a prime example of the way in which postcolonial authors "write back" to the empire, challenging its racist assumptions, its claims to cultural superiority, and its economic exploitation of the colonized.

Things Fall Apart (1958)

The novel tells the tragic story of Okonkwo, a famous Igbo warrior at the turn of the 19th century, when British colonizers and missionaries first arrived in Nigeria. Okonkwo is a totally headstrong guy, and he does not see eye-to-eye with the English. As you can imagine, things don't turn out so well for him. In fact, things fall apart. (Sorry, we had to.)

Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart as a direct response to the negative depiction of Africans he saw in a lot of European literature. He wanted to write his own novel and show the Europeans that Africans were not the "savages" they were made out to be in European literature. Lo and behold, we got Things Fall Apart.

Arrow of God (1964)

Arrow of God is a kind of sequel to Things Fall Apart, tracing what happens a few decades after the events that take place in the first novel. It tells the story of Ezeulu, an Igbo priest in Nigeria who stands up to colonizers and missionaries. It's all about the fight between indigenous religion and values and Christianity. And no, things don't stay together here, either.