Professor Chinua Achebe, one of the world’s most celebrated writers and author of the classic novel Things Fall Apart, is dead.
SaharaReporters learned that Achebe, who was the David and Mariana Fisher Professor of Literature at Brown University, died last night in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Professor Achebe had been sick for some time. He was 82 years old.
Prof. Achebe literary agent, Andrew Whilie and his publisher,Scott Myers confirmed his death.
A friend of the Achebe family told SaharaReporters that the family would be making a formal announcement after consulting with others, including Professor Achebe’s publishers and Brown University.
Achebe had been wheel chair-bound since sustaining serious injuries in a 1990 automobile accident near Awka, the capital of Anambra State. The accident left him paraplegic. Since receiving treatment for his injuries in a hospital in the UK, Achebe had lived in the US, teaching at Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson and, for the last four years, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. At Brown, he instituted the “Achebe Colloquium on Africa,” a huge annual conference that gathered policy makers, scholars and activists from around the globe to discuss some of the major issues pertaining to African democracy and development.
JD: IT IS SAD TO SEE ONE OF THE VOICES OF REASON IN NIGERIA GO “SO SOON”!.So soon?yes,because his job is not done.Nigeria suddenly finds itself facing a paucity of elderly people who can stand up to be counted.Nigeria is in dire need of elderly woices that can help shape us back into the straight and narrow.Well respected Achebe was one of the last of the origins and to drive his point home he even rejected the honour done him by the government.Now it looks as if with the turnaround of Gowon(Alams pardon was right) Wole Soyinka might be doing a solo run.
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