Where to start with Chinua Achebe

Nigerian novelist, 1930–2013.

Best Chinua Achebe book to start with: Things Fall Apart (1958), on 7 of the 16 lists it could have made.

Things Fall Apart is the place to begin, and it is short enough to read over a weekend. It is set in an Igbo village in Nigeria in the late 19th century, just as British missionaries and officials arrive, and Achebe tells it in plain, measured sentences with proverbs worked into the talk.

Arrow of God is the one to read next. It goes back to a village in the same part of Nigeria, a little later, and follows a priest whose authority is challenged from inside the community and from outside it. It is slower and more intricate than the first book, so it suits a reader who already knows the world Achebe is writing about.

Anthills of the Savannah was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987 and appeared more than twenty years after Arrow of God. It is set in an invented West African country under military rule and passes between several narrators. It is the most modern of the three and the least like the others, so read it last.