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Insightful African story that transcends Africa

Customer Rating:

As a post-graduate student preparing for diplomatic assignment to Africa, my African history curriculum includes a number of Achebe stories. I particularly appreciate "No Longer At Ease." While many point to "Things Fall Apart" as the masterpiece, I find Achebe's later works more engaging due to deeper character colorization. Style-wise, "No Longer At Ease" has strengths and weaknesses. The dialogue is alive, the descriptions are vivid, the flow generally smooth. However, the pacing is a tad slow and I'm not sure if the non-linear sequence is the best (story opens with endgame and then flashbacks the preceding events that lead up to it). Female characters are shallower than male, which seems to be consistent in Achebe's earlier works. Substance-wise, there is a universality to the story that makes it very powerful. The timeless themes of individual will vs mainstream collective, love vs cultural/conventional taboo, opposing pulls from different societies, and tragic fall from grace; all would make Shakespeare proud. Thus, while the setting is southern Nigeria a few years prior to independence, the story is as much a statement(s)about human struggles as it is about African struggles. Not that the latter is neglected. The beauty of this story is that today in 2008, the same contradictions, challenges, and problems are just as relevant as they were pre-1960. In fact that is what makes this fiction more than fiction for those seriously interested in Africa and West Africa in particular. Some additional comments & observations: - Globalization didn't just start in the 1990s. The dynamics of modernism from the West merging with urbanized and rural societies of Africa is starkly prevalent. Different segments of society take the changes in stride to vastly different degrees. This phenomenon is in no way restricted to Africa in the 1950s. My own family has varying levels of comfort with technology and communication changes over the last decade or so. - The Africans in the story place an incredible premium on status. Education is valued not for intrinsic reasons (e.g. become an engineer in order to build things) but as a vehicle to elevated social status - which translates directly to opportunity for prosperity via civil service. "To occupy a 'European post' was second only to actually being European. It raised a man from the masses to the elite..." Africans apparently learn the lessons of the West all too well, that is, with an unhealthy over-emphasis on how "learned" someone is and what credentials one has, rather than practical ability to do productive work. Perhaps it is purposeful Achebe brilliance in that characters (African and European) in the story are perpetually busy with work yet they never seem accomplish anything meaningful; there is merely a ballet of self-supporting bureaucracy. - The main character, Obi, is a trailblazer reminiscent of Jackie Robinson. His gifts don't free him to simply play the game, but burden him with special wider responsibility. Obi never does succeed in reconciling the traditional demands of his people and those of the colonial establishment and modernizing world. This is in fact the root of his tragic fall. - Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the story is the reminder of the intelligence and sophistication on the part of the Africans. Isn't it easy to observe the end product - corrupt and dysfunctional governments in Africa today - and "logically" work backwards to deduce that the reason must be personal/individual inadequacy? This self-attribution error is hard to avoid. Don't we think in this vein about our own earlier generations? We imagine them as less shrewd and capable. However did WWI spark off, for example? It's too hard to imagine - people must have been more ignorant or less clever then, no?

Plenty of Ease, Apparently

Customer Rating:

I read this book with great anticipation, as "Things Fall Apart" is probably one of my favourite books of all time. I was sorely disappointed, both with the poor quality of the characterisation, the glacial pace of the plot, the 50 or so pages that could have easily been left out, and the overall not-so-subtle blaming of all life's ills on the white man. Achebe gives the impression that things in Africa would've been just fine had the white man not intervened and gummed up the works. As we can see with the disasters in present day Zimbabwe and Sudan, Africa has long had its own set of problems long before British colonialism. "Things Fall Apart" was crafted so perfectly that it read like a song...a sad one, but a song nonetheless. "No Longer At Ease" repeats so many of the same parables, so many of the same ideas that it seemed almost made up of things that Achebe couldn't find a place for in its prequel. It also seemed to be written in a hurry and skimmed the surface of so many deeper issues one of left pondering in "Things Fall Apart". I've heard Achebe recently interviewed on BBC Radio, and he is a joy to listen to. This book, however, is not his best effort by far. It was only out of loyalty that I finished it and promptly regretted buying it at all. I give it two stars because I like Achebe's style, but that's being pretty generous. A great disappointment.

To he who is given much

Customer Rating:

I've read about a couple of recent novels published by Nigerian writers about Nigeria yet I've always wanted my first literary encounter with this contentious nation to be through the gaze of its most honored writer Chinua Achebe. In "No Longer at Ease", his second novel, Achebe explores the moral and cultural conflict that arises as the result of an often cataclysmic collision of European colonialism and African independence. Obi Okonkwo, the novel's main character, is a first generation English educated Nigerian. After college, Obi returns to a transitioning Nigeria, where one's options in life are still limited by the aftermath of British rule and the onset of Nigerian corruption (the later resulting in large part from the former). Upon his return, Obi is faced with the financial expectations of the tribe that helped sponsor his education, the ire of his family for his choice of fiancée and the assumption by many of his countrymen that, through his station with the Senior Service, he is capable of influencing (with a little financial motivation) the outcome of scholarships awarded to Nigerian students. As he navigates through each dilemma Obi must balance the ethical certainties learned through his western education with the cultural practices of his country. The results are at times noble at other times indictable. Achebe is incredible at capturing the sounds and flavor of Nigeria. Even more remarkable is his ability to do so in English, a language not his own and vastly different from his native tongue. "No Longer at Ease" provides excellent insight into the struggles faced by those who transition from the old to the new whether in terms of educational advancement or socio-economic elevation. As a first generation college graduate I found the challenges and expectations faced by Obi to be quite familiar. I was able to connect with his thought processes and clearly understood the emotional conflicts. A relative once said to me that of he who is given much, much is required. I've learned, over time, that we should all do what we can when we can. This was a good read and the novel is as poignant today as it was when it was originally published over forty-five years ago. Enjoy!

The Trouble with Nigeria

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Although considered a sequel to "Things Fall Apart," "No Longer at Ease" stands on its own and does not require that you read Achebe's more famous work (assuming you've somehow made it through school and managed to escape its ubiquity). It's probably more accurate to say that "No Longer at Ease" is a retelling set in modern Nigeria, and it is as great as--perhaps better than--his earlier work. Obi Okonkwo is the grandson of Okonkwo, the central character in "Things Fall Apart" (and, other than thematic similarities, this is the only direct link between the two books). With the assistance of fellow villagers who had "made it" in the larger world, Obi leaves home for schooling in England and returns to a civil service job in the colonial administration of Nigeria. Because he is one of the select representatives of his village to receive such treatment, expectations are high: he is to live like a member of his class, entertain like a prince, and pay back his educational expenses. He also finds out quickly that his position on the Scholarship Board, recommending prospective students, is a magnet for bribery. Here, Achebe forsakes the quasi-mythical storytelling tone of "Things Fall Apart" in favor of a more realist style--and this novel, I think, is both stronger and more accessible as a result. In both works, though, Achebe examines how native culture and tradition come into conflict with Western conventions and materialism. Not only is Obi is torn between the often contradictory demands of success and politesse, but he must also face the patronizing racism of his white superiors and the "backward" conventions of his own people. He falls in love with a woman, only to find her spurned by his people because she is "osu"--an outcast. "It was scandalous," Obi thinks, " that in the middle of the twentieth century a man could be barred from marrying a girl simply because her great-great-great-great-grandfather had been dedicated to serve a god, thereby setting himself apart and turning his descendents into a forbidden caste to the end of the Time." Unable to satisfy either his family and friends or his British overlords, Obi is headed for the nearly preordained downfall that opens the book. It's a tragedy that underscores all of Achebe's works, which critically examine both Western attitudes toward Africa and the corruption in his native homeland. (The title of this review, in fact, is appropriated from one of Achebe's nonfiction works.) It is not modernization per se to which Achebe objects (after all, he now lives in the United States), but the racism and marginalization that accompanied and have superseded imperialism and that created unreasonable expectations for Nigerians. Through the prism of fiction, "Things Fall Apart" represents powerfully the paradoxes of African life in a Western world.

No Longer At Ease

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After writing "Things Fall Apart", Achebe again comes to us with a masterpiece sequel tiled "No Longer At Ease". This book depicts Obi Okonkwo, the grandson of the Okonkwo in the former. He is an honorable character who comes to a tragic end because of the corruption going on around him, this book also depicts the assimilation that the Nigerians go through and their identity shaken with waves and waves of European influence. A book more concerned over the social issues that the Nigerians at the time felt for their time. This is also shown in Africa today, where corruption run rampant and those in power care nothing about those without power. A powerful novel indeed.