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The Education of a British-Protected Child
Chinua Achebe
Essays
Knopf
October 2009
On Sale: October 6, 2009
176 pages
ISBN: 0307272559
EAN: 9780307272553
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
From the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart and winner
of the Man Booker International Prize comes a new
collection of autobiographical essays—his first new book in
more than twenty years. Chinua Achebe’s characteristically measured and nuanced
voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully
written pieces. In a preface, he discusses his historic
visit to his Nigerian homeland on the occasion of the
fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Things Fall
Apart, the story of his tragic car accident nearly twenty
years ago, and the potent symbolism of President Obama’s
election. In “The Education of a British-Protected Child,”
Achebe gives us a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial
Nigeria and inhabiting its “middle ground,” recalling both
his happy memories of reading novels in secondary school
and the harsher truths of colonial rule. In “Spelling Our
Proper Name,” Achebe considers the African-American
diaspora, meeting and reading Langston Hughes and James
Baldwin, and learning what it means not to know “from
whence he came.” The complex politics and history of Africa
figure in “What Is Nigeria to Me?,” “Africa’s Tarnished
Name,” and “Politics and Politicians of Language in African
Literature.” And Achebe’s extraordinary family life comes
into view in “My Dad and Me” and “My Daughters,” where we
observe the effect of Christian missionaries on his father
and witness the culture shock of raising “brown” children
in America. Charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and
steadfastly wise, The Education of a British-Protected
Child is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe
oeuvre.
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