USA Africa Dialogue Series - "How Achebe ruined African literature"

"Such pointed dissents from multiculturalist orthodoxy may explain the strange fact that although Soyinka is, by most accounts, a better and more interesting writer than Achebe, he is not nearly so well known. His marvelous plays are rarely assigned in Western classrooms. In commercial terms, Soyinka has never been a huge success, whereas sales of Achebe's books accounted for as much as a third of the revenue coming in from the African Writers Series even in the 1980s, decades after they had first been published. When Soyinka won the Nobel Prize in 1986, he was cornered at a reception by one particularly effusive admirer who proceeded to praise his work in the most gushing terms. When Soyinka asked, "What have you read by me?" the admirer answered, "Things Fall Apart." -

- Helen Rittelmeyer

"... Soyinka is, by most accounts, a better and more interesting writer than Achebe" ???!! Okay, I hear! What do I think? Awful essay blighted by Rittelmeyer's ideological bias. Simplistic, patronizing and dated. She needs to read more contemporary writing by Africans.

http://www.claremontinstitute.org/index.php?act=crbArticle&id=114#sthash.sr9bATJ5.5p7MYiZP.dpuf

- Ikhide

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