Chinua Achebe

Born in Ogidi, southeastern Nigeria, on November 16, 1940, Chinua Achebe has become one of the world's leading fiction writers. He is a fascinating writer, whose life is of the stuff that makes fiction. Growing up in the cultural crossroads of colonial Nigeria, he lived and mediated in a world in which his people moved between allegiance to traditional Igbo beliefs and values and those introduced by the British colonialism, particularly Anglican Christianity under the Church Missionary Society.