Things Fall Apart

中文名：
崩溃
作者：
齐诺瓦·阿切比 Chinua Achebe
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崩溃(Things Fall Apart)简介：

One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy:

Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.

And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.

Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. --Alix Wilber

《崩溃》是齐诺瓦·阿切比的代表作，1959年发表后立即获得英国最高文学奖布克奖。至今，本书在全世界的销售已超过1100万册，被翻译为50余种语言。
小说讲述了一名非洲部落英雄的故事以及英国殖民者入侵博族人的生活实况，被称为非洲英语小说中的杰作，作者以敏锐的洞察力刻画了一个信奉传统的英雄形象——主人公伊博人量个很有毅力充满智慧的人，终其一生致力于克服软弱的父亲在他心里下的阴影，并取得了很大的成功，在同乡邻里之间赢得了极高的声望，一度被读者奉为类似希腊悲剧中的失败的英雄。文中充满了悲天怜人的人道主义关怀，社会苦难、传统的人文主义、社会凝聚力与作者出神入化的叙事技巧构成了珠联璧合的极致。

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