I've yet to go to Nigeria, but even the fact that I have n't can't obscure how it's written itself so large in my life: through my father who lived there for several years; through a great love, a wonderful, generous, sweet hearted, tender, sparkling, quick witted woman from Lagos; through it's writers, and how abundant a country it is for them, a random few - Wole Soyinka, Buchi Emecheta, Chimama Ngozi Adichie - and of course, Chinua Achebe, whom we lost yesterday.

Some books you never forget; Things Fall Apart, is unquestionably part of that pantheon, it's one of the foundation stones. Worlds must open and scales fall from blinkered eyes, or a novel has not done it's work. There has to be a transformation, a revelation, a new understanding; Things Fall Apart is that very constellation. 

I found this wonderful quote of Achebe in  Nadine Gordimer's appreciation of him in today's Guardian: " Everything is grist to the mill of the artist. True, one grain may differ from another in it's power of nourishment; still, we must ...accord appropriate recognition to every grain that comes our way".