Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe, born in 1930, was raised within an evangelical Christian family in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in Igboland, in eastern Nigeria. After studying medicine and literature at the University of Ibadan, he went to work for the Nigerian Broadcasting Company in Lagos. His radio career ended abruptly in 1966 when he left his position as Director of External Broadcasting during the national uprising and massacres that led to the Biafran War. He had narrowly escaped confrontation with armed soldiers who apparently believed that his novel... A Popular Man This implied [the involvement] in the first military coup in Nigeria.
Achebe's career as an academic university began in 1967 when he was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria. He became Professor Emeritus in 1985. Among the universities where he taught are the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut. Achebe has received numerous distinctions from different parts of the world, including more than twenty honorary doctorates from universities in Great Britain, the United States of America, Canada and Nigeria. In 1987 he received the most important Nigerian award that recognizes intellectual work, the Nigerian National Merit Award.
Achebe is the author of many novels, short stories, essays, and children's books. When Everything Falls Apart , his first novel, was published in 1958. It has sold over eight million copies and has been translated into at least 45 languages. It was followed by No Longer At Ease (1960), The Arrow of God (1964), which collected the first New Statesman Jock Campbell Prize, and A Popular Man (1966). Anthills of Savannah It was shortlisted for the Booker McConnell Prize in 1987. Beware Soul Brother, a book of poetry, received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972.
Chinua Achebe lives in the United States and teaches at Bard College. He is married and has four children.