Interview with Chinua Achebe conducted by Okey Ndibe, Joyce Ashuntantang, Sowore Omoyele, and Oyiza Adaba (continued)

Q: TFA has become the most widely read, most widely translated novel in African literature. Have you reflected at all on the impact that TFA specifically

but also your total oeuvre have had on other African writers?

 

A: Yes. I haven’t given much thought in the sense of writing anything about it. For one thing, it’s a little risky, you know. Some people started talking about the Achebe generation. It’s not everybody who wants to be in the school of Achebe.

 

Some of my best friends became writers. I’m thinking particularly, for instance, now of John Munonye, who was my classmate. Now there’s a joke that was told me by another friend, Francis Ellah—about himself and John Munonye. Francis said they thought, after the publication of TFA, “Why can’t we be writing a novel, be novelists?” So they decided they were going to begin. So they bought lots of pencils and paper and they were to begin this weekend. And so John went into one room, Francis to the other, and they started writing. The way Francis put it, probably not exactly, was that by the end of the day he gave up and John continued.

 

Q: Interesting anecdote...

 

A: So it wasn’t even the younger generation. These were people of my own age. And many of them, quite a number, did take up writing, but of course they would write differently. And by the way, the generation of Cyprian Ekwensi was then the background, the older generation than ourselves. He had followed a different path in writing, but he was there. So it wasn’t altogether an accident. Amos Tutuola was there; again a different path. Some pundits said, “Oh that’s how African literature will be,” but no single person has ever copied Tutuola because there is just no way you can get it. That is his own. So we are lucky. There is really talent in our culture, a lot of talent, and it’s not an accident that Nigeria, in the past, has all these traditions – the Nok culture, the Igbo-Ukwu culture, the Ife culture, the Benin culture – and all of them very rich. And all we need is to sit down quietly and make something of it.

 

Q: TFA and Okonkwo have been with us for 50 years. Has Okonkwo been living with you these 50 years, has he been with you, and how is he doing?

 

A: Yeah, it’s interesting how you put it. He has, and what I feel towards him is a sense of wonder and pity. Pity is probably not a good word because Okonkwo is a very dignified and proud person and would not like anyone to pity him. But I am sort of concerned that a major aspect of our human experience has to be suffering and failing to reach where you set out to go because of all kinds of things on the way. One day somebody came to me in the hospital after I had this accident, and the question he asked me was, “Why you? Why would this happen to you?” So I said—I didn’t think twice—I said to him, “Do you have an idea of somebody else to whom it should have happened?” What I was saying is that the world is tragic by nature. And that’s why tragic stories appeal to me, far more than happy and comic stories. Both the tragic and the comic are there in our lives, but somehow the tragic one, the Okonkwo kind of story, is the one that speaks most to us.

 

Q: You’ve made a personal effort to make sure we don’t forget the late poet, Christopher Okigbo, who was your close friend. Does Okigbo live on because of your efforts or because he left behind works that still speak to us?

A: My son was two years or three years old when Okigbo died, and when I came back – this is during the Biafran war – I just traveled from Enugu to my home to announce to my family that I heard on the radio that Okigbo had been killed. My son, Ike, said, “Daddy, don’t let him die!” The reason was that Okigbo had made friends with him. Okigbo had friends everywhere, children, old people. I remember that whenever he came to visit us, this little boy would hold his hand and try to break it and Okigbo would be pretending to be in pain crying. They would be struggling this way and Okigbo would say over his head, “Children are so wicked.” And so that’s the boy who said, “Don’t let him die.” I then decided to publish something called Don’t Let Him Die, an anthology of poetry by friends of Okigbo—or anyone who wanted to contribute. There was no plan which would work unless the subject, in this case Okigbo, had something of interest to say. His life was so romantic in a way, his life and death was so extraordinary. It just seemed so unlike anybody else you knew. So that’s the material for the kind of history that we have of him. But there is also the profound nature of his poetry. So it is both his life and his works.

 

Q: There’s the moment in TFA when the District Commissioner says the story of Okonkwo is interesting, but he wants to give it perhaps a paragraph in his own book. Did you consciously write that as irony…?

 

A: Yeah, I think so. I mean it’s clearly…it’s not very fine irony, it’s so crude.

 

Q: You think it’s crude?

A: Yeah, for the man who said it. But that’s how they figured out the colonial subject.

 

Q: I read your bio and you were a very savvy young man, the way they described you in those days in the 70s, the way you dressed, and all that. When I heard of this accident, it’s been worrying me, and I’m sure it’s worried a lot of your fans: What exactly has this accident meant to you as a writer and person? Do you think you could have produced more than you’ve done…?

 

A: Well, it’s done those things you’ve just indicated. I was telling you the story of the fellow who said, Why should it happen to me? And my answer is “Why not?” And that’s really what I believe. Look at my fiction. Okonkwo is strong-headed, and wouldn’t listen to advice, and it’s a trap. And what happens? He comes to a sticky end. Then I say, okay, let me try a different kind of African, an intellectual kind of person. So I go to Ezeulu in Arrow of God. He is a priest, a philosopher, and what happens to him? He comes to a sticky end. So there’s no way out. What came to us—in Igbo they say that what came to Nte—Nte is a small insect—the Igbo say that what came to it is bigger than it. What was caught in his trap – Nte went and set a trap – and something bigger than himself was caught in that trap. So what does Nte do? So there is no way, there is no short answer to the problem posed to us from the moment the initiative was taken from us and we lost our freedom and independence.

 

Q: How can literature illuminate the African—even human—crisis?

 

A: Oh, there were people who had a very, very rough treatment in the world. They are known as black people. And they were fighting or struggling to make sense of what happened to them. Someone said to them, “Why should this happen to you, why you?” And they said, “Well, that’s the way the world is.” We must find a way out, we must face this problem, face our history. When a people have a history that is embittered—Anthills of the Savannah—an embittered history, we’ve got a task on our hands. We’ve got a big task. And even Nigeria, impossible as it seems, we’ll someday get under control. We won’t keep having retired generals and so on much longer. The thing is not to lose hope. Despair is the worst possible suggestion. I think we must struggle and keep fighting.

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Q: Over the next fifty years, will TFA continue to speak to us about this struggle?

 

A: Well if it does—I mean if you find it useful, but it’s not because I said so—it is simply that people found that it was speaking to them. If it stops speaking to people then people will stop reading it.

 

Q: When you were writing TFA, which was the day you felt, yes, this was a book and I trust it?

 

A: Well, I think it was the day I finished. But you see, the thing with writing, my kind of writing, is that you never really finish. When I thought I had finished, Bisi Onabanjo, with whom I was sharing accommodation in London—we both went to the BBC—and a friend—he knew I had this manuscript, and he said to me, “Why don’t you show it to this?” The man was a BBC producer who was a novelist, Gilbert Phelps. I was very shy, but Bisi kept saying, “Show him.” So after a while I took this manuscript and I told him I was writing. And he looked as writers look if you bring them a manuscript. He wasn’t hostile, but he wasn’t exactly impressive. But he accepted—very polite. Then Bisi and I, we went on some British Council tour of three or four days. One day I came back from an outing and there was a message for me that said one Gilbert Phelps called and left his number. So I said, well, if he doesn’t like the book, would he make a phone call? Wouldn’t he wait for me to return? So maybe he likes it. So I would call him. That was the first response I had—and to cut a long story short, he liked the book. He recommended his publishers to see it. Meanwhile, his publishers saw it and they were ready to start. I said, “No, the book is not ready.” I had made a mistake in thinking that I could have three generations in one book. And yet it’s not a big book. So it is too thin to carry this weight. That version of TFA had Okonkwo, Okonkwo’s children’s generation, and a third generation—so bringing it to today. And now I realized just so suddenly that there are three books. The first part is Okonkwo. So that’s what I’m going to do. And then after that I’ll see what happens. And so I rewrote the book with this emphasis on Okonkwo’s generation, not his son. Eventually I wrote No Longer At Ease, the story of Okonkwo’s son. But what about my father’s generation? That one is still waiting to be done. So, see, there is no quick answer to your question. If it’s working, go on. If it’s not, then try something else.

 

Q: Of all your books, which one got you into the most struggle?

A: I think it’s A Man of the People. One day I came home – I think it was a Sunday actually, I went out and came back – I was then director of broadcasting. My staff, two young fellows from the North who were in charge of the Hausa Programs—they called me and they said, “Soldiers are looking for you. They said they want to see which is stronger, your pen or their gun.” So I picked up the phone and dialed Victor Badejo who was the director general. I said “Victor, what is this story?” He said, “Where are you?” I said, “I’m at home.” He said, “Take Christie and children and leave.” So I took my family, Christie and the two children, got into the car and began to look for somewhere where we could hide. So that was A Man of the People. That was the closest.

 

SM: Would you ever return to Nigeria? If yes, under what conditions?

 

A: Well, the conditions, I don’t really ask very much. What I would like to see is a situation in which if I wanted to buy an antibiotic or something, and I went to the pharmacy, it would be an antibiotic that you buy. And that all the doctors we train will not be leaving Nigeria and practicing in America and Britain and so on, but some would stay in Nigeria. Including my son, his whole class in medical school is here—the entire class—there is not one in Nigeria.

 

Q: If it were possible to return to life again, in what form would you want to return?

 

A: The same. [Laughter]. This is the one I know.

 

Q: What do you think about Fela who had almost the same impact in terms of music as you’ve had in literature?

 

A: You know, he once said I was the only genuine professor. [Laughter]. Well I thought very highly of him. It’s a pity his life was so rough that he just couldn’t survive. But he delivered the message he came to deliver with his music. Like Okigbo, it wasn’t that he didn’t know that what he was going to do was very dangerous. He knew, and tried very hard – this is very interesting for me – to deceive me about where he was going. He told me he was going to Europe, because we were working together on publishing. If he had told me he was going to join the army, I would have said, “Well, have you thought about it, and what about our publishing?” So he told me he was going to Europe, and it was later I heard. By then he was already in uniform. I am not saying I would stop anybody from what they want to do, but I would say let’s discuss it.

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Q: You have people who influenced you in literature—you’ve talked about Yeats’ poem. Who influenced you in your town of Ogidi? Who was the one trusted adult, or uncle, or friend you confided in? Or asked questions?

 

A: No, I didn’t have one adult that I confided in. The whole village was set up to be an institution. So that if you were just listening like children – you were not supposed to join in the conversation, but you would be around – and you would hear people, many of them. The people who impressed me were those who could just deflate a problem by their words, you know. I saw that several times. At one of the procedures for engaging a girl and then paying the dowry and all of that, if you listened to that…One day I heard a mischievous man say about a girl who was just about to be married—and he was telling those who were coming to marry her—that she has not been trained. “So when you go home you will start training her.” This was to harm the girl and her father. But an old man from the other side wouldn’t wait for the girl’s father to answer. The old man from the side that had come to marry the girl said, “Don’t worry, we have not been trained ourselves. Marriage is each one trains the other.”

 

Q: When last did you read TFA, and did it surprise you in any way? Did you learn something from reading it?

 

A: I haven’t read it all that lately. What I’m doing now is not reading it really; it’s translating, which takes the joy out of reading. But when I dipped into it—I dip into it—I feel it’s all right. I think it said what it wants to say. If I make up my mind that I want to change it or to edit it, of course you would find something to do. You can change is to was. [Laughter]. But it’s not in that caliber now. If there is any spelling mistake, it can stay. [Laughter].