Farewell Achebe, the literary giant who wrote with a feathery touch

We lionise people too much when they die in this part of the world. But Chinua Achebe richly deserves all the praise he is getting.

The other literary giants of his age – Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiong’o – are both great in their own ways.

But the one thing that struck me about Achebe is that he seemed to write with a smile on his face. There was a playful sense of mischief. His sense of humour while addressing serious issues made him thoroughly readable.

I didn’t enjoy Things Fall Apart, possibly because I read it too young. I found Okwonkwo’s end too tragic at an age when all the stories I had heard about community heroes concluded in emphatic triumph.

The creditor

But for no particular reason, the story I remember most is the episode where an angry creditor comes knocking on the door of Okwonkwo’s father, Unoka.

The creditor was thoroughly worked up while Unoka was a picture of calm. After listening to his creditor’s charges, Unoka pointed to a wall where he showed him several sticks he had drawn indicating how many sacks of yam he owed other people.

“I have many debtors who I owe far more than you but they have not come knocking on my door at dawn,” he said, though that’s not an exact quote (I’m writing this from the memory of books read as a teenager; the literary experts will write more accurate reviews).

Here is Achebe addressing the subject of the balance between rashness and bravery in, I think, Anthills of the Savannah. “The coward watches the funeral of his brave neighbour from the dung heap in his compound.” You will struggle to find such multilayered wisdom away from Achebe.

Was it in A Man of the People where a thief barges at the door and the victim simply cries: “God will not agree!” The voice, with a Nigerian accent, pops directly from the page to your ears as you read it.

Something that unites the great writers of Achebe’s era is their direct political activism.

The best recent summary of this is to be found in Soyinka’s excellent semi-autobiographical work, You Must Set Forth at Dawn.

The book offers a vivid portrait of the tragedy that is modern Nigeria. Through all the dramas of coups and wars, the writers were never far from the action.

Sadly, the ethnic tensions that will be familiar to Kenyans are never far from the surface. Soyinka, a proud Yoruba, opposed the Biafra secession movement. Achebe, an Igbo, sided with Biafra.

Soyinka tried to organise a conference of writers from both camps that would send a strong message of unity as the nation headed towards war. The Achebe camp boycotted, he writes. (I will now have to look for Achebe’s There was a Country to get his own version of events).

In Kenya, writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo were at the forefront in searching for solutions to the problems society faced, something that holds lessons for the current generation of writers.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My former colleague Munyori Buku attended a talk by Achebe at university where he told them: oyiina kaenacho, zumarizu (where one thing stands, another stands beside it). Having not touched a work of fiction for a decade, I will test that proverb by reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, which was recommended by Prof Egara Kabaji in Saturday’s paper.

Meanwhile, we should celebrate, not mourn, Achebe. He achieved a feat only a few dozen people ever will. His work belongs in the category of “permanent literature”. It will be read for as long as man lives.

Murithi Mutiga is the Special Projects Editor, Sunday Nation [email protected]