NIGERIA:One of Africa's most enduring writers, Nigerian master Chinua Achebe, has been awarded the second Man Booker International Prize for fiction.
The prize, worth £60,000, is for a body of work.
Achebe, a writer and academic who has balanced his intellectualism and passion with a beguiling love of story, has pioneered African writing in English.
His work has also explored the Western perception of Africa and African people. Most important of all, his fiction has charted the transition from traditional to contemporary in African literature.
Achebe's influences are European, from the English Victorian George Eliot to the cosmopolitan Pole Joseph Conrad.
He is alert to fiction as an anthropological record as much as an act of the imagination. His uncluttered, formal prose provides an ideal foil for his inspired use of Ibo legend, proverbs and colloquialism.
One of six children, Chinua Achebe was born in the village of Ogidi, in Iboland in eastern Nigeria in 1930. He initially studied medicine and literature before briefly joining the Nigerian broadcasting company.
Fame came instantly on the publication of his first novel, Things Fall Apart. The Yeatsian title was apt: Achebe was telling the story of a society in chaos.
Okonkwo, the central character, attempts to save his village. It is a tragedy told with a detachment that renders the narrative all the more powerful. Land ownership tears at the heart of the community, as does the new influence of Christianity and the threat to native culture.
Late in the novel the bewildered Okonkwo asks: does the white man understand our customs about land? To which the reply is ominous: how can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say our customs are bad.
Achebe makes his political points without resorting to bald polemic. Early in the writing of Things Fall Apart he realised he was dealing with a family saga and that a sequel would be necessary. No Longer At Ease took up the story with Okonkwo's grandson, a civil servant who has become corrupted by the dual pressures of superstition and prejudice. The third novel, Arrow of God (1964) completed what would become known as the African Trilogy.
With A Man of the People (1966) Achebe's tone was becoming more satiric, yet he preserved his restraint. He also became involved in politics and served the short-lived Biafran government as a diplomat.
From the 1970s Achebe turned to essays and commentaries and also wrote for children while working as a career academic. Yet the appeal of Things Fall Apart remained strong and continued to win him readers.
Achebe's return to fiction in 1987 with the savagely ironic narrative of Anthills of the Savannah was hailed as a homecoming.
This story of life after a military coup sees danger lurking for the men who have helped place the dictator in office. Two childhood friends see themselves on opposite sides of the moral divide.
The novel could as easily have been written today, and about any number of countries. This universality is why Achebe has been honoured, giving a new generation reason to experience the classic first book which remains Achebe's greatest achievement.
