Name: No Longer at Ease
ISBN: 9780385474559

Chinua Achebe

The sequel to the classic, Things Fall Apart, tells of a troubled young African whose formal education separates him from his roots and makes him part of a corrupt ruling elite he despises. Reprint.

No Longer at Ease

Obi Okonkwo is an idealistic young man who, thanks to the privileges of an education in Britain, has now returned to Nigeria for a job in the civil service. However in his new role he finds that the way of government seems to be backhanders and corruption. Obi manages to resist the bribes that are offered to him, but when he falls in love with an unsuitable girl - to the disapproval of his parents - he sinks further into emotional and financial turmoil. The lure of easy money becomes harder to refuse, and Obi becomes caught in a trap he cannot escape. Showing a man lost in cultural limbo, and a Nigeria entering a new age of disillusionment, No Longer at Ease concludes Achebe's remarkable trilogy charting three generations of an African community under the impact of colonialism, the first two volumes of which are Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God.

Sarah Sammis

A Nigerian Heart of the Matter but without the "'happy ending'" because "real tragedy is never resolved." (p. 45)

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2017/comm...

Obi Okenkwo, a Nigerian country boy, is determined to make it in the city. Educated in England, he has new, refined tastes which eventually conflict with his good resolutions and lead to his downfall.

Vivian

Within the first chapter we already know what happened to Oki Okonkwo - a British-educated young man, who returned to colonial Nigeria in the late 1950s to work in the civil service. Bright-eyed, idealistic and disillusioned, Oki found the ruling elite’s corruption repugnant, but not long after we found him in court on trial for bribery. The white judge outcried “I cannot comprehend how a young man of your education and brilliant promise could have done this!”. Obi’s English boss lamented “We have brought him western education, but what use is it to him? The African is corrupt through and through!” How did this happen? That is what we try to find out in the rest of the book.

Published in 1960, right before Nigeria gained independence from the UK, I can see how Achebe’s fictions came to be regarded so highly for their focus on culture ambiguity, African identity, and decolonization. Written historical record from the colonizers, the rich and powerful, is always more plentiful than it is from the colonized, the poor and powerless. Fiction writing serves as a medium for readers to enter deep into the personal lives of individual African in the colonial era.

One of my favorites from the book: “The second generation of educated Nigerians had gone back to eating pounded yams or garri with their fingers for the good reason that it tasted better that way. Also for the even better reason that they were not as scared as the first generation of being called uncivilized.”