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A review by daveparry67
No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe
4.0
Last year I read ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe, mentioned in Don McCullin’s autobiography; he’d met Achebe who seemed hardened by the conflicts around him... The book left me feeling quite pessimistic, that no human society is capable of demonstrating any compassion to another or of breaking away from violence & oppression... This is the 2nd in the classic series of 3 & is only short...
As the book opens, Obi Okonkwo is on trial for corruption in Lagos; then we go back & see him sent at great expense by his village to university in England & then return, wanting to reform the country... Everyone else takes bribes, sees it as just the way things work, mutually beneficial...
Obi resists but spends all his money before he’s earned it (I know how easy that is to do!) & ends up in financial trouble... There’s an absurd sequence of events in which he keeps running up further expenses & even loses a vast sum of money in an instant, all made worse by relationships strained by expectation & tradition...
In the end he gives up, takes money where he’s offered it & when he’s paid his debts decides to stop... only it’s just too late & he’s caught... So it’s a critique of 50s Nigeria (& relevant to today) where corruption is self perpetuating & no-one can progress without it, but perversely, if you don’t play the game you get made an example of...
This was better than the first book, for me... I’m looking forward to ‘Arrow of God’ now...
As the book opens, Obi Okonkwo is on trial for corruption in Lagos; then we go back & see him sent at great expense by his village to university in England & then return, wanting to reform the country... Everyone else takes bribes, sees it as just the way things work, mutually beneficial...
Obi resists but spends all his money before he’s earned it (I know how easy that is to do!) & ends up in financial trouble... There’s an absurd sequence of events in which he keeps running up further expenses & even loses a vast sum of money in an instant, all made worse by relationships strained by expectation & tradition...
In the end he gives up, takes money where he’s offered it & when he’s paid his debts decides to stop... only it’s just too late & he’s caught... So it’s a critique of 50s Nigeria (& relevant to today) where corruption is self perpetuating & no-one can progress without it, but perversely, if you don’t play the game you get made an example of...
This was better than the first book, for me... I’m looking forward to ‘Arrow of God’ now...