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A review by chiddybrendan
No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe
3.0
The plot of the novel is fairly straightforward. Obi Okonkwo, a UK educated son of a village Anglican catechist returns home and takes a good civil service job. He meets a lady on his way back and decides to marry her. Meanwhile at his new job he struggles financially due to several commitments including his living costs, loan repayments, school fees for his sibling, etc. His parents’ disapproval of marriage to his proposed spouse because she is an osu (despite their Christianity) combines to drive him to a mental crisis. In this he finally falls into the bribe temptation and is caught.
But the experience of this novel for me is found mostly in the supreme storytelling genius of Prof Chinua Achebe. His use of figures of speech are soothing, but then his generosity with, and deployment of Igbo proverbs is for me reminiscent of the good old days… those days of my siblings and I listening to daddy tell us stories of tortoise and the leopard.. you know those days of Tales by Moonlight.. How I miss them…
On a different and final note I wonder how accurate Prof Achebe’s portrayal of the Nigerian and his society of the time is. If bribery and corruption was already almost a norm in the 1950s (a generation with many of the nation’s independence heroes) then it’s no surprise where we are now, the growth seeming more linear than say exponential or radical. Even Obi’s boss Mr Green thought educated Nigerians of the time were corrupt, self-centered, lacked foresight, and didn’t have the country at heart. If this is the case then have we been doomed from the start?
But the experience of this novel for me is found mostly in the supreme storytelling genius of Prof Chinua Achebe. His use of figures of speech are soothing, but then his generosity with, and deployment of Igbo proverbs is for me reminiscent of the good old days… those days of my siblings and I listening to daddy tell us stories of tortoise and the leopard.. you know those days of Tales by Moonlight.. How I miss them…
On a different and final note I wonder how accurate Prof Achebe’s portrayal of the Nigerian and his society of the time is. If bribery and corruption was already almost a norm in the 1950s (a generation with many of the nation’s independence heroes) then it’s no surprise where we are now, the growth seeming more linear than say exponential or radical. Even Obi’s boss Mr Green thought educated Nigerians of the time were corrupt, self-centered, lacked foresight, and didn’t have the country at heart. If this is the case then have we been doomed from the start?