Google Doodle Celebrates Nigerian Author and Father of Modern African Literature

He is Nigeria's best-known author and has been called the father of modern African literature.

But Chinua Achebe still sometimes fails to command the respect and knowledge he is due in the West. After the Guardian compiled a list of the 100 best novels written in English in 2015, there was such outrage that a list of 15 additional books was put together: Achebe's debut novel Things Fall Apart was first on that list.

Google chose to commemorate Achebe in its Doodle on Wednesday on what would have been the late author's 87th birthday.

Born the son of an evangelical priest in what was then the British protectorate of Nigeria, Achebe synthesized the West African country's colonial history with the traditions of the Igbo ethnic group, one of Nigeria's largest ethnicities, to which he belonged. He chose to write in English—a controversial decision, given it was the language of Nigeria's colonizers—yet his books featured characters and storylines that celebrated the distinctive way of life of the Igbo.

Achebe started writing in the 1950s, with Things Fall Apart being published in 1958. The book—which has now been translated into over 50 languages and sold more than 10 million copies—recounts the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo chief whose life is dramatically affected by the arrival of Western colonizers in his village.

Things Fall Apart —together with Achebe's successive books No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God —are such emblematic titles on the continent that they are known collectively as the African Trilogy.