More personally revealing than anything Achebe has written, Home and Exile-the great Nigerian novelist's first book in more than ten years-is a major statement on the importance of stories as real sources of power, especially for those whose stories have traditionally been told by outsiders. In three elegant essays, Achebe seeks to rescue African culture from narratives written about it by Europeans. Looking through the prism of his experiences as a student in English schools in Nigeria, he provides devastating examples of European cultural imperialism. He examines the impact that his novel Things Fall Apart had on efforts to reclaim Africa's story. And he argues for the importance of writing and living the African experience because, he believes, Africa needs stories told by Africans.
"He is a brilliant narrator. He can say anything and he will captivate you and you will listen. He is a great performer. Here he is writing about the confrontation between Western culture and the traditional culture and he gives you a historical framework in these essays – but he does it in a very personal way. One of the titles of the essays is ‘My Home under Imperial Fire’ where he talks about the advent of the colonial administration in Nigeria and how this aided, and indeed rode on the back of, misrepresentations of the African in literary accounts of early European travellers, etc. He particularly singles out Conrad and Joyce Carey as being the latest manifestation of that long tradition. And in another essay, ‘The Empire Fights Back’, he talks about the emerging literary works from former colonised territories, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, etc – leading towards what he calls a balance of stories. These are recurring themes in all of his writing. Even in his latest collection of essays, The Education of a British Protected Child , he returns to those themes. But, such is his genius for narrative he never bores. He is a brilliant essayist. Yes, things are always happening and you have to write about them to make sense of them. We have some younger writers coming through. It is hard for me, being based in the US, to be on top of it all. But one follows what is going on in the papers. I know that a young lady, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, just won the Commonwealth Prize for Literature. She wrote about the notorious Nigerian email scams. I haven’t read the book yet. And other people are writing about the Niger Delta troubles. These are topical issues that people living there are trying to make sense of. Nigeria is a society in transformation. It is changing politically and sociologically and that, of course, has its effect on the people."
