Writing War: A Reading List
Molly Crabapple, co-author and illustrator of Marwan Hisham’s latest memoir, Brother of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War and Alexis Okeowo, author of A Moonless Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and… More
Chinua Achebe: “The Day I Finally Met Baldwin”
You should have seen his severe countenance crumble instantly into boyish happiness…With typical hyperbole, Baldwin called me his buddy, a brother he had not seen in 400 years. More
Susan Sontag and Chinua Achebe In Conversation
"Art is supposed to give us a second handle on reality, so that when real life becomes too rough, we can use this." More
PEN World Voices Festival Tenth Anniversary Highlights
Founded in 2005 under the direction of Salman Rushdie, the PEN World Voices Festival has hosted more than 1,400 writers from 78 countries, speaking 56 languages. More
‘That Book Wrote Me’
Chinua Achebe delivered the following speech at the close of PEN's 2008 Tribute to Chinua Achebe. It appears in PEN America 9: Checkpoints, along with other excerpts from the… More
Strangely Personal: Growing Up in Chinua Achebe’s House
The year that I turned six, my family moved into a bigger house with a staircase that at first terrified me. The family that had just moved out, I… More
Love Letter
“You’re a really good writer,” she said, “almost as good as your brother Charles. You should read the novel he’s writing.” So I snuck into Charles’s room and… More
Chinua Achebe Reads from Things Fall Apart
PEN America joins the literary community in mourning the loss of Chinua Achebe, a major contributor not only to African literature but to world literature as well. Listen to… More
Things Fall Apart, Chapters One and Two
THINGS FALL APARTChapter OneOkonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had… More
Things Come Together, Things Fall Apart
Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and… More
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