Africa Works

Comparing the achievements of writers is difficult, yet one cannot help wondering why the Nobel committee could not select Chinua Achebe, Nigeria’s great writer of realistic fiction, for its literary prize this year. Without denigrating the work of Doris Lessing, a writer of great talent and insight, is not Achebe’s literary legacy more worthy, more universal, and certainly more specific to one of the great historical movements, that of the colonization and de-colonization of black Africa. The Nobel has a well-established taste of course for white writers who found their voice on African soil. Is it not time for Achebe to receive the sae recognition? Is it possible to imagine the current outpouring of African literature — and especially young women writers of realistic fiction — without Achebe? His slim novel, “Things Fall Apart,” is a masterwork and his later books and short stories, while also slim, further distinguish him as a writer of rare story-telling gifts, conscience and insight into both the human condition and the African predicament. In the light of Achebe’s enduring achievements, Lessing seems a lesser light.