6 - The novelist as critic: politics and criticism, 1960–1988

Summary

Achebe's first four novels were written while he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation from 1954 as a Talks Producer and later as Director of External Broadcasting. As Nigeria moved towards independence in 1960, the role of the NBC in helping to create a sense of national identity, ensuring that the electorate was politically well informed, and linking new technology to the continuation of traditional cultures and forms was an exciting and important one. Achebe's work took him to various parts of Nigeria to research topics and interview his fellow Nigerians, and might well have contributed to his keen ear for nuances in language and varieties of dialogue, as well as to the sense his novels convey of awareness of an immediate audience. In 1961, the year he married Christie Chinwe Okoli, he was appointed Director of External Broadcasting for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. His two first novels had by this time brought him considerable fame, and in 1962 he was asked to become founding editor of the influential African Writers Series which had been started by Alan Hill and Van Milne of Heinemann Educational Books, with Things Fall Apart as the first in the series. In just over twenty years, this series of inexpensive paperback editions made available to African, European and American readers the works of some hundred and fifty writers from all over the African continent.