Annotated Bibliography

Larson, Charles R. The Emergence of African Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1972. Print.

This is a book written by Charles Larson that explores and analyzes different authors and their works/books. He looks at different aspects of authors like Chinua Achebe, James Ngugi, Peter Abrahams, and Ayi Kwei Armah.

I was interested in chapter 2, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: The Arcetypal African Novel (Nigeria). In this section it mostly provides a chapter by chapter overview of what this book is about. Larson gets into a little about what he thinks about the novel in addition to the overall summary provided.

I think this is available to the college student and the westerner in general. Larson provides critique saying that the main character (Okonkwo) does not have a “complete characterization”. Larson, in a way, accuses Achebe of holding off on Okonkwo saying anything until later.

 

David Carroll, Things Fall Apart.

This article is in the Norton Critical Edition of Things Fall Apart and was published around 1990.

Carroll review a few aspects of the book such as the main character and missionaries. He thinks that Okonkwo is destroying “the organic links between the individuals, the family and the village” due to his increasing in wealth.

This is also geared towards the college student and or reader who might be searching for a new perspective on this story. The Norton Critical Edition offers the reader a numerous amount of essays from critiques to interviews with Achebe.