Achebes Biography

Chinua Achebe was born in 1930; he is a Nigerian novelist and poet, and he is generally acknowledged as the father of the African novel. Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi in Nigeria; he is the child of Isaiah Okafor Achebe, a teacher in a missionary school, and Janet Ileogbunam. His parents taught him many of the values of their traditional Igbo culture, and it is not surprising that they reflect even in his works. In 1944 Chinua Achebe went to Government College in Umuahia. Like other major Nigerian writers including Elechi Amadi, Wole Soyinka, John Pepper Clark, John Okigbo, and Cole Omotso, he was also attended the University College of Ibadan, where he studied English, History and Theology. In 1953 he graduated with a BA, before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS, later changed to Nigerian Broadcasting Corporarion, or NBC) in Lagos. In 1954 he travelled in Africa and America, and laboured for a short time as a teacher at a local school in Oba.
Likewise, for a period in the 1960s he was the director of External Services in control of the Voice of Nigeria. His participation in the things that concerns Nigeria helps him to be able to relate the African experience to the world. He also shows his, support for Biafra in the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), working for the government as an ambassador. In 1967 Achebe co-founded the publishing company Citadell Press at Enugu with Christopher Okigbo, a gifted poet and close family friend. Besides, Okigbo joined the army and was killed in action in August 1967, and the operation of the press was concluded. As a result, Achebe's writings from this period echo his deep personal disappointment with what Nigeria became since independence. Also, his pregnant wife suffered a miscarriage, and Achebe himself narrowly escaped death. Achebe returned to the war years through his writing and discusses their effect consequence. In the 1990s Achebe taught literature to undergraduates at Bard College, a liberal arts school,