Chinua Achebe · 1958 · overland

Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel, the most widely read work of African literature, the story of Okonkwo, a leader of the Igbo village of Umuofia in what is now Nigeria, on the eve of British colonialism. Exiled to his motherland and returning to find his world overtaken by missionaries and colonial power, he embodies a whole culture being undone. Spare, unsentimental and devastating, it tells the story of colonisation from the inside. The journey here is a local one, the arc of an exile and a return.

1. 1
   Umuofia

   Okonkwo, a proud and fearsome wrestler and yam farmer, rises to greatness in the nine villages of Umuofia, ruled by custom, oracle and the fear of weakness.

2. 2
   Mbanta

   After an accidental killing he is exiled for seven years to Mbanta, his mother's village, where he chafes and waits, even as white missionaries first appear in the land.

3. 3
   Umuofia

   He returns to an Umuofia transformed by the British and their church and court, and finds that the world he knew has already fallen apart.