No Longer at Ease

More than ten years ago I read and very much enjoyed Things Fall Apart, the Chinua Achebe novel about the tragedy of Okonkwo, a proud Nigerian man who winds up leading a one-man resistance of sorts when white men arrive to colonize his homeland. What I loved most about that book was the neutrality of its tone; it would have been so easy to depict the pre-colonial Nigerians as either a peaceful, prosperous people or a bunch of savages - and ditto the arriving white men - but Achebe toes that line carefully and allows his characters to be multi-faceted, to be good or evil or civilized regardless of their race. I was, like, seventeen, and very impressionable, and reading about how pre-colonial Nigerians were, you know, complicated, like all other regular-ass people in history - that was eye-opening.

Anyway, here's its sequel, a short read at less than 200 pages, No Longer at Ease, about one of Okonkwo's grandsons, who may or may not have besmirched his own honor by accepting a bribe or two. It... didn't have quite the same effect on me. Here's what I wrote over at goodreads:

Very difficult not to compare this to its own predecessor, Things Fall Apart, and for that it suffers. That book was about an obstinate man fiercely resisting but slowly realizing that his very way of life would be forever changed when white men came to his African village - a doozy of a conflict, a hell of a tragedy. This book, revolving one of that man's grandsons, derives most of its dramatic tension from the dilemma of whether or not an honorable and educated man would allow himself to accept a bribe. Like, whether or not he can resist becoming that dreaded stereotype of the corrupt and shady African government man is the tragic conflict facing Obi Okonkwo, which is a far cry from his grandfather's hopeless fight for his own culture. There's a thematic throughline here for sure, the grandfather's inevitable defeat leading indirectly to the society in which the grandson can have this fall from grace, and the story still works. It just doesn't thrive.

So lightning didn't strike twice. Damn. Chinua Achebe has a few more novels I may check out one day, but it took me ten years to get to this one and I didn't even like it very much, so, let's not hold our breath, alright?