A review by tasmanian_bibliophile
No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe

5.0

This second novel in the trilogy is about Obi Okonkwo, grandson of the main character in the first novel. He has returned to Nigeria for a position in the public service after receiving a British education funded by his village. As the novel opens, he is in court, convicted of corruption. Flashbacks will tell us his story. And yes, the novel’s epigraph, the final four lines from ‘The Journey of the Magi’ set the scene. 

‘We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, 

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, 

With an alien people clutching their gods. 

I should be glad of another death.’ 

(T. S. Eliot, ‘The Journey of the Magi’) 

This novel was published in 1960, the year Nigeria became independent from Britain. Obi Okonkwo returns to a country in transition, preparing for independence. Times are changing: 

‘Mr Ikedi had come to Umuofia from a township, and was able to tell the gathering how wedding feasts had been steadily declining in the towns since the invention of invitation cards. Many of his hearers whistled in disbelief when he told them that a man could not go to his neighbour’s wedding unless he was given one of these papers on which they wrote R.S.V.P. – Rice and Stew Very plenty – which was invariably an overstatement.’ 

Obi is welcomed back by the committee who funded his four years of university education.  The village has made many sacrifices to fund Obi’s education, and he is expected to pay the money back over a period. 

‘He spoke of the great honour Obi had brought to the ancient town of Umuofia, which could now join the comity of other towns in their march towards political irredentism, social equality, and economic emancipation.’ 

‘The white man’s country must be very distant indeed,’ suggested one of the men. Everyone knew it was very distant, but they wanted to hear it again from the mouth of their young kinsman. 

‘It is not something that can be told,’ said Obi. ‘It took the white man’s ship sixteen days – four market weeks – to do the journey.’ 

But Obi, surrounded by expectations, opportunity, and relative privilege, finds his debts mounting. And when he falls in love with an unsuitable woman, an outcast, his financial and emotional turmoil increases. 

‘Lagos is a bad place for a young man. If you follow its sweetness, you will perish.’ 

At first Obi resists the bribes offered to him, but when he succumbs, he learns that there are consequences. 

Throughout the novel, Mr Achebe illustrates the tensions between tradition and modern expectations. Obi has let down his village more than once, but he is their kinsman, and they support him. 

‘This is what the world had come to. Children left their old parents at home and scattered in all directions in search of money. It was hard on an old woman. It was like having a river and yet washing one’s hands with spittle.’ 

Do I feel sorry for Obi? Yes, a little. He may be foolish but is caught between two worlds, unable to rest easy in either. 

 I am now preparing to read the final book in this trilogy: ‘Arrow of God’. 

Jennifer Cameron-Smith