num_pages: 204
description: The Four Novels of Chinua Achebe is a critical study of Africa's foremost novelist by one of Africa's foremost critics. Offering a fresh, useful and unified collection of essays, the book contains exquisite prose analysis, distinctive in its sub- ject-matter and rhetoric. Analytically and philosophically, Dr. Njoku probes Achebe's fictional world with its realistic and naturalistic trends. Dr. Njoku follows Achebe as he examines the traditional life and cultures of the Igbo people in the nineteenth century, examines the village life of the people in their early years of contact with the Europeans, and carries us to the life and traditions of the people in the 1920s. To him No Longer At Ease is a novel of realism heightened by serious, social and psychological analysis, and it outlines the conflict between the idealism of a European-educated African and his attempt to re-integrate himself into the life of his people. The tragic consequences of Africa's encounter with Europe are evaluated. In A Man of The People, Dr. Njoku shows that intellectual sophistication is not everything as he contrasts Odili's intellectual brilliance with the pragmatic, naive, political wisdom of his foil, Chief Nanga.
language: English
title: The Four Novels of Chinua Achebe: A Critical Study
titlecomplete: The Four Novels of Chinua Achebe: A Critical Study (American University Studies)
publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers