Of Mmonwu and Spirits of the Living-Dead

Discovering Things Fall Apart

Source: reading.cornel.edu

(Chinua Achebe)--"Soon after [an] encounter with my future father-in-law I moved to Lagos to interview for a new position at the headquarters of what was now called the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC). The Talks Department hired me to maul over scripts and prepare them for broadcast. A tedious job, it nevertheless honed my skill for writing realistic dialogue, a gift I gratefully tapped into when writing my novels.

In my second or third year at University College, Ibadan, I had offered two short stories, 'Polar Understanding' and 'Marriage is a Private Affair,' to the University Herald, the campus magazine. They were accepted and published. I published other stories during that time, including 'The Old Order in Conflict with the New' and 'Dead Men's Path.' In my third year I was invited to join the editorial committee of the journal. A bit later I became the magazine's editor.

At the University College, Ibadan, I was in contact with instructors of literature, of religion, and of history who had spent several years teaching in England. Studying religion was new to me and interesting because the focus went beyond Christian theology to encompass wider scholarship--West African religions.