A fantastic essay at The New Inquiry inspects the recently deceased Chinua Achebe’s place in the Western literary canon.
In an interview a few years ago, Norman Rush was talking about the ways he was influenced by African writers, and he mentioned that “No non-African could do what Achebe has done.” And I get what he was saying. But there’s also a back-handedness to this compliment that makes me nervous.
Read the whole thing for more on what made Achebe a great novelist, and the subtle segregation to which books by African writers can be subjected.
