Chinua Achebe grew up loving stories. He was born in southeastern Nigeria in 1930 in the village of Ogidi. His parents converted to Christianity and traveled as evangelists. He attended a prestigious secondary school and studied English literature at University College in Ibadan.
Along the way, he had an epiphany: If an English village populated by Jane Austen could be the setting for universal stories, why couldn't a Nigerian village? His debut novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), set in an Igbo community on the cusp of colonization, became a worldwide best seller. "There is that great proverb," Achebe told the Paris...
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