No Longer At Ease: [Hardcover]

Chinua Achebe (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Heinemann 1977: (1977)
• ASIN: B002BUKGCO
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

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

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No Longer at Ease (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

23 of 23 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 (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Longer at Ease (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.

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

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

By 

Edward Bosnar - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Longer at Ease (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.