THINGS FALL APART BY CHINUA ACHEBE

The book tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a STRONG MAN of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty, it provides the powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society.  Another story that in the book, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries. These two dramas are perfectly harmonized and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. It(book)is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within.