Looking at Africa, Looking at Ourselves
Other than by risking a conversation, how else can we understand each other?
Other than by risking a conversation, how else can we understand each other?
I have been rereading Chinua Achebe’s angry response to a wholehearted academic embrace of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Readers of Things Fall Apart will recall the moment in the penultimate chapter of the novel when the gathering of the people of Umuofia is rudely interrupted by messengers from the white man. The messengers are confronted by Okonkwo, who happens to have taken a position at the very edge of the gathering.