Chinua Achebe honoured by Google on his 87th birthday
Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, the revered author of 'Things Fall Apart', has been called the father of modern African literature. For this widely read novel, Chinua Achebe won the Man Booker International Prize in 2007. Google paid respects to the literary icon on its homepage with a Google Doodle on his 87th birthday. A tweet by Google Africa honouring Chinua Ache read: "Today we celebrate Chinua Achebe's 87th birthday. Considered by many to be the father of modern African literature, Chinua Achebe has touched many lives with his words. #GoogleDoodle"
Chinua Achebe was born on November 16, 1930, was the fifth of six children in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria. He grew up at a time of Christian missionaries and British colonialism. He was an excellent student and was fascinated with world religions and traditional African cultures. He began writing stories as a university student.
His other notable writings are No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People and Anthills of the Savannah.
Chinua Achebe had also been a strident critic of corruption and misrule in Nigeria, where endemic graft has robbed Africa's biggest oil producer of massive sums of public money.
He also strongly backed his native Biafra in Nigeria's 1967-1970 civil war which killed around one million people -- the subject of a long-awaited memoir he published last year.
In 2011, Chinua Achebe rejected a Nigerian government offer to honour him with one of the nation's highest awards - at least the second time he had done so.
During January 2012 protests in Nigeria over a fuel price hike, Achebe issued "A Statement of Solidarity with the Nigerian People" that gained attention back home.
He had lived and worked as a professor in the United States. A 1990 car accident left him in a wheelchair and limited his travel.
"'Things Fall Apart' turned the west's perception of Africa on its head - a perception that until then had been based solely on the views of white colonialists.
South African writer and Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer called Chinua Achebe the "father of modern African literature" in 2007, when she was among the judges to award him the Man Booker International prize for fiction.
Chinua Achebe died after a short illness on March 21, 2013 in Boston, United States.
No exaggeration by Google in saying that he touched many lives with his words. A Google Doodle rightly deserved for this iconic writer.
(With Inputs from Agence France-Presse)