There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe Read Free Book Online Page A

that remains one of my favorite international capitals.
    I took along my typed manuscript, hoping to bump into a number of writers and publishers
     who could provide me with some advice about how best to get the book published. I
     was fortunate to meet and make the acquaintance of Gilbert Phelps, a British writer,
     who read the manuscript and was quite enthusiastic about its literary merit and prospects
     for publication. When Mr. Phelps kindly suggested that I hand over the manuscript
     to him to pass on to some publishers he knew; I hesitated and told him that I needed
     some more time to work on the novel. I was still wondering whether to publish it in
     three parts or divide the work into three separate books. 2
    About a year later I wrote Gilbert Phelps and informed him that my novel,
Things Fall Apart
, was ready, and he happily sent the manuscript off to a number of publishers. There
     were several of instant rejections. Some did not even bother to read it, jaundiced
     by their impression that a book with an African backdrop had no “marketability.” Some
     of the responders found the very concept of an African novel amusing. The book’s fortunes
     changed when it got into the hands of Alan Hill and Donald McRae, executives of Heinemann.
     McRae had extensive experience traveling throughout Africa and encouraged Heinemann
     to publish the novel with a powerful recommendation: “This is the best first novel
     I have read since the war.” 3
    It was under Alan Hill’s guidance that
Things Fall Apart
received immediate and consistent support. The initial publication run from Heinemann
     was two thousand hardcover copies.
Things Fall Apart
got some of its earliest endorsements and positive reviews from Canada, where critics
     such as G. D. Killam and the novelist Jean Margaret Laurence embraced it. Later the
     postcolonial literary critics Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin helped
     introduce the book into the Australian and British literary establishments. Michael
     Thelwell, Bernth Lindfors, Priscilla Tyler, Charles Larson, and Catherine Lynnette
     Innes were some of the first intellectuals in America to pick up the novel and present
     it to an American audience.
    In England the book received positive reviews from the
Observer
,
Time and Tide
, and
The Times Literary Supplement
, among other publications. But not all the reviews were as kind or positive. Some
     failed to understand “the point of African Literature” and what I and others were
     trying to achieve by telling our own stories. It did the work a great deal of good,
     however, that the distinguished novelist Angus Wilson and the well-respected literary
     critic Walter Allen wrote positively about my first novel.
    In Nigeria there was a mixed bag of responses. Some of my old teachers at Ibadan found
     the idea of my publishing a novel “charming,” but many African intellectuals saw both
     literary and political merit in the work.
    When I wrote
Things Fall Apart
I began to understand and value my traditional Igbo history even more. I am not suggesting
     that I was an expert in the history of the world. I was a very young man. I knew I
     had a story, but how it fit into the story of the world—I really had no sense of that.
     After a while I began to understand why the book had resonance. Its meaning for my
     Igbo people was clear to me, but I didn’t know how other people elsewhere would respond
     to it. Did it have any meaning or relevance for them? I realized that it did when,
     to give just one example, the whole class of a girls’ college in South Korea wrote
     to me, and each one expressed an opinion about the book. And then I learned something:
     They had a history that was similar to the story of
Things Fall Apart
—the history of colonization. This I didn’t know before. Their colonizer was Japan.
     So these people across the waters were able to relate to the story of dispossession
     in Africa. People from different parts