No Longer at Ease [Paperback]

Chinua Achebe (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 16, 1994

The story of a man whose foreign education has separated him from his African roots and made him parts of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds repugnant.  More than thirty years after it was first written, this novel remains a brilliant statement on the challenges still facing African society.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Chinua Achebe is a magical writer — one of the greatest of the twentieth century."
— Margaret Atwood

"It is a measure of Achebe's creative gift that he has no need whatsoever for prose fireworks to light the flame of his intense drama. Wothry of particular attention are the characters. Achebe doesn't create his people with fastidiously detailed line drawings: instead, he relies on a few short strokes that highlight whatever prominent features will bring the total personlaity into three-dimensional life."
— Time

"The power of majesty of Chinua Achebe's work has, literally, opened the world to generations of readers. He is an ambassador of art, and a profound recorder of the human condition."
— Michael Dorris

"He is one of the few writers of our time who has touched us with a code of values that will never be ironic. This great voice."
— Michael Ondaatje --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

The story of a man whose foreign education has separated him from his African roots and made him parts of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. More than thirty years after it was first written, this novel remains a brilliant statement on the challenges still facing African society.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 194 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (September 16, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385474555
• ISBN-13: 978-0385474559
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #202,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 58 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars where's his Nobel Prize? November 6, 2000

By Orrin C. Judd VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Obi Okonkwo, grandson of the protagonist in Things Fall Apart, is the pride of his Nigerian village, Umuofia. The Ibo villagers pooled their money to send one native son off to England to be educated and Obi was chosen. Now he has returned to a prestigious job with the civil service in Lagos--he's the Administrative Assistant to the Inspector of Schools. He bears the burden of his people's expectations but his exposure to Western culture has distanced him from tribal life and though he is now earning a magnificent living by their standards, he has trouble making ends meet as he tries keeping up with the Joneses in the big city. Borrowing money, he ends up "digging a new pit to fill up an old one." Further complicating matters is his love affair with the lovely Clara, an osu, one of the socio-religious outcasts who also figured prominently in Things Fall Apart.

As financial and romantic pressures continue to mount and his beloved mother sickens and dies, Obi must also deal with temptation, offers of money and sex if he will use his position to assist scholarship applicants. For as long as he can, Obi juggles all of these problems, but gradually they come crashing down on him.

More directly than almost any author I'm aware of, Chinua Achebe faces head on the issues which confront the developing nations in a post-Colonial world. In No Longer At Ease, even as he pokes fun at the remaining English bureaucrats and their condescending ways, he honors their tradition of relatively honest civil service. Meanwhile, he questions whether at least this first generation of natives who are replacing the departing Europeans are truly prepared to meet the same standards or whether a slide into corruption is nearly inevitable.

Obi is a decent enough man and he has the best of intentions, but he gets in way over his head, bringing tragedy down upon himself and disgrace to his village. His situation, as portrayed by Achebe--caught between the traditions and expectations of his village on the one hand and the modern ways and legal constraints of the West on the other--puts him in an untenable position, one where something must give. The title of the book comes from T. S. Eliots's The Journey of the Magi :

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.

Achebe offers a fully realized portrait of one of those returned who are "no longer at ease," aliens in their own country. It's a terrific book.

GRADE : A

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Achebe shows us how reality contrasts with our ideals. July 4, 1998

By Anthony D. Riker

Format:Paperback

Achebe's sequel to Things Fall Apart, he seeks to reconcile and give us a further understanding of the struggle between modernism and tradition. He gives us a view of how our ideals contrast with how we really live and exist in reality. The point of this book can be best summed up by Achebe's own words. He states, "The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace." This book while centered mainly on the African identity crisis, gives a broad understanding of issues of right and wrong and moral consequences of individualism.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars First-rate literature November 9, 2000

By Edward Bosnar

Format:Paperback

"No Longer At Ease" deals with a theme that is well-developed by Achebe, i.e. the exploration of the interaction between rapid modernization (or, better stated, Westernization) brought to Africa by colonial (mis)rule on the one hand, and tradition on the other. I actually think this book is better than "Things Fall Apart," in which Achebe depicts the brutality of the outright conquest of an African society by a colonial power (in this case the British). In "No Longer At Ease" he shows the deep and drastic changes which occurred in society in Nigeria as colonial rule became established, and how this change warped social relations in the country. Society in the colony is no longer something created and maintained by the native Africans, but rather an imitation (or attempt thereof) of the colonial power's society. It lies somwhere in between, because it's not traditional, yet the natives are treated like second-class citizens in their own country. Through the central character, Achebe does an excellent job of evoking the alienation and frustration this engenders among those Nigerians who are Western-educated and urbanized, yet not really able or allowed to participate in decision-making in any meaningful way. Achebe is a truly masterful writer who can convey such a potent message through literature.