Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Chinua Achebe

“Camara Laye’s The Dark Child and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart because they gave me a glorious shock of recognition. Until I read them, I was not consciously aware that people who looked like me could exist in books. I grew up in a Nigerian university town, and all the books I read before then were foreign children’s books with white characters doing unfamiliar things.”

“I do reread novels I love, like Chinua Achebe’s “Arrow of God,” to remind myself of what fiction can do.”