Did you know: Today would have marked the 83rd birthday of Chinua Achebe, the beloved Nigerian author, poet, and academic During the Nigerian Civil War, Achebe served as an ambassador for the Biafran government. Nelson Mandela is among Chinua Achebe’s biggest fans. After Achebe passed away, while recalling what he did to keep himself busy in his 27 years of incarceration in apartheid South Africa, Mandela said: “There was a writer named Chinua Achebe, in whose company the prison walls fell down.” Achebe and Wole Soyinka once fought over girl-related matters. In 1952, girls from St Teresa’s College performed a musical titled Hiawatha at University College (now the University of Ibadan). It appears that some of the men in the audience were not on their best behaviour during the performance.Achebe’s reaction criticising their behaviour, published in the literary magazine called The Bug, which he also edited, launched a light-hearted war of letters that spanned about two years, which Soyinka and another fellow named Sesay participated in. And you thought it was the girls at war. While in Nigeria in 1990 to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, Achebe was involved in a road accident which left him paralysed from the waist down.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 15:42:04 +0000
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