Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart

First posted 6/12/2020; last updated 7/5/2020.

Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe

First Publication: 1958 Category: poetic fiction/children’s novel Sales: 20 million

Accolades:

About the Book: “Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy.” AZ “Its story chronicles pre-colonial life in the south-eastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of the Europeans during the late nineteenth century.” WK “The title of the novel was borrowed from W. B. Yeats’ 1919 poem ‘The Second Coming.’” WK The story is “told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior” AZ “and local wrestling champion in the fictional Nigerian clan of Umuofia.” WK “The work is split into three parts, with the first describing his family, personal history, and the customs and society of the Igbo, and the second and third sections introducing the influence of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on the Igbo community.” WK Things Fall Apart explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.” AZ The book “provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.” AZ The book has been translated into 57 languages AZ and “is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and is widely read and studied in English-speaking countries around the world.” WZ Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon WK Wikipedia

Jack Kerouac's On the Road published 50 years ago today

First posted 6/11/2020; updated 7/5/2020.

On the Road Jack Kerouac

First Publication: September 5, 1957 Category: Beat Generation semi-autobiographical novel Sales: 3 million

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book: This is “the defining novel” LC “of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use.” WK It features “many key figures in the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx) and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.” WK “On the Road has achieved a mythic status in part because it portrays the restless energy and desire for freedom that makes people take off to see the world.” LCThis “is a semiautobiographical tale of a bohemian cross-country adventure” LC between two friends on “a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naiveté and wild ambition and imbued with Kerouac’s love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.” AZ It “has influenced artists such as Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Hunter S. Thompson and films such as Easy Rider.” LC “The idea for On the Road…was formed during the late 1940s in a series of notebooks, and then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951.” WK “When the book was originally released, The New York Times hailed it as ‘the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as ‘beat,’ and whose principal avatar he is.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon LC Library of Congress (2012). “Books That Shaped America” WK Wikipedia

In July 2018, I became the organizer of the Classic Novels Book Club. Check out the Book Club tab here or Meetup for more information. This is our April 2020 book.

William Golding's Lord of the Flies published 50 years ago today

First posted 6/15/2020; updated 7/6/2020.

Lord of the Flies William Golding

First Publication: September 17, 1954 Category: young adult fiction/allegory Sales: ?

Accolades:

About the Book: “Before The Hunger Games there was Lord of the Flies,” BN “one of the greatest books ever written for young adults and an unforgettable classic for readers of any age.” AZ “Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse,” BN this “novel by Nobel Prize–winning British author William Golding” WK “has established itself as a true classic” BN which ”remains as provocative today as when it was first published.” BN “Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature.” BN “At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate. This far from civilization they can do anything they want. Anything. But as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far removed from reality as the hope of being rescued.” AZ The book then becomes a “startling, brutal portrait of human nature” AZ as it focuses in on the boys’ “disastrous attempt to govern themselves.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon BN Barnes & Noble WK Wikipedia

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man published 50 years ago today

First posted 6/9/2020; updated 7/5/2020.

Invisible Man Ralph Ellison

First Publication: April 14, 1952 Category: novel/social commentary Sales: ?

Accolades:

About the Book: “A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks…and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century.” AZ Time magazine called it “the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century.” WK “Ellison addresses what it means to be an African American in a world hostile to the rights of a minority, on the cusp of the emerging civil rights movement that was to change society irrevocably.” LC The book confronts “many of the social and intellectual issues facing African Americans early in the twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.” WK The “unnamed narrator who views himself as someone many in society do not see much less pay attention to.” LC He “describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of ‘the Brotherhood,’ and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.” AZ “The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.” AZ In turn, “according to The New York Times, former U.S. president Barack Obama modeled his memoir Dreams from My Father on Ellison’s novel.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon LC Library of Congress (2012). “Books That Shaped America” WK Wikipedia

George Orwell's Animal Farm published 50 years ago today

First posted 6/24/2020; updated 7/6/2020.

Animal Farm George Orwell

First Publication: August 17, 1945 Category: allegorial novella/political satire Sales: 20 million

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book: “George Orwell’s timeless and timely allegorical novel – a scathing satire on a downtrodden society’s blind march towards totalitarianism.” AZ “According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union... [who Orwell] believed had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror.” WK “Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.” AZ “A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned – a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.” AZ Orwell wrote the book…when the UK was in its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union and the British people and intelligentsia held Stalin in high esteem, a phenomenon Orwell hated. The manuscript was initially rejected by a number of British and American publishers, including one of Orwell’s own, Victor Gollancz, which delayed its publication. It became a great commercial success when it did appear partly because international relations were transformed as the wartime alliance gave way to the Cold War.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon WK Wikipedia