brilliantly written in english, with the rich flavor and music of african proverbs and words. an inside look at how worlds and cultures were rendered irrelevant and brusquely replaced by the colonial/missionary enterprise.
i found the use of the english language incredible in that achebe was able to endow it with a completely diff cultural context – effortlessly. many times when people write about other cultures in english, it feels like we’re looking in, from the outside. the language itself becomes an impediment, an artifice. it’s a true feat to be able to overcome that distance and speak from the inside. a remarkable achievement. i also thought that the story, altho seemingly simple, is multi-layered. finally, his style of writing is anything but “dramatic” (it’s limpid, measured) yet half a page can elicit tears, laughter or shock in the most surprising of ways.