From Our Archives - Chinua Achebe, 1986

In this interview, broadcast on 23 July 1986 on the BBC World Service’s programme African Perspective, Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe speaks to presenter Fiona Ledger.

The author of Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964) and A Man of the People (1966) had not published a new novel for 20 years.

During this conversation, he reveals that he is about to finish his fifth novel, Anthills of the Savannah, which was published a year later. But he decides not to speak about it.

Instead, he talks at length about his private life, his career, his characters, the dilemma of writing in English, and his views on politics and religion.

Four years after this interview, Achebe suffered a car accident in Lagos, Nigeria’s capital, which left him paralyzed from the waist down.

He spent most of the rest of his life in the United States where he taught literature and continued writing. He died in Boston in 2013, and was buried in his hometown in Ogidi, Anambra State, Nigeria.

(Photo: Chinua Achebe visiting Nigeria in 2009, BBC)