No Longer at Ease Paperback – December 10, 2020

No Longer At Ease is the third installment of Achebe’s African Trilogy, first published in 1960. This volume follows the third generation of a family from a native Igbo village in what is now Nigeria. Achebe, university educated in England as an English major, again cites T.S. Eliot (“The Journey of the Magi”) for the epigraph to the book:“We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods.”Obi Okonkwo is two generations removed from his grandfather, the strong man of the village of Umuofia, who killed the messenger from the new British colonial administration, and then hanged himself. As the elder Odogwu said, “Today greatness has changed its tune. Titles are no longer great, neither are barns or large numbers of wives and children. Greatness is now in the things of the white man.”Obi Okonkwo’s father Isaac was the eldest son of this strong-man Okonkwo, who converted to the new religion of Christianity with a zeal consistent with Okonkwo’s passion for life, and as a result was ostracized by the village. But his son Obi was easily the best student from the village, and the village scrapped and saved to send Obi to England for “book” learning so he could assist the village in dealing with the foreign administration that so dramatically now dominated Igbo village life. (“We are sending you to learn book. Enjoyment can wait. Do not hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.”) The written word has a powerful magic to an illiterate: “Our women made black patterns on their bodies with the juice of the uli tree. It was beautiful, but it soon faded. But our elders spoke about the uli that never faded. We see it today in the writing of the white man.”Achebe picks up Obi’s story upon his return from England as the prodigal son of the village. Obi obtains a plum job for educated locals in the capital Lagos and the villagers think Obi has it made, lots of money and prestige. Obi even receives a rent-free apartment in the government zone and a car, the highest status symbol for a local Nigerian. But all is not as it seems. Obi has massive financial demands. From his village to repay the loan that paid for his tuition at the English university. From his lover who provides what little financial support that she can. From his family, who are sending his younger brother to a private school to learn English. All this financial pressure results in a logical conundrum: how to meet everyone’s expectations with limited resources. The result is a catastrophe.Achebe’s fourth novel, the 1966 volume A Man of the People, is overtly more political than No Longer at Ease. It tells the story of a talented, educated young Igbo man, Ogdili, who becomes the apprentice of a successful Igbo politician, Chief Nanga, and then becomes disenchanted by the overt corruption of the political class. The story is classic Achebe, but it’s plain political import lessens the impact of the narrative. This said, it is not to diminish Achebe’s literary achievement. He brings a very unique way of life to our immediate comprehension, through flawed characters who nonetheless have deeply felt commitments to a truly African result.Try out this unique novelist’s narratives. You will never look at contemporary African politics the same again.

For those readers who like to experience the literature of other worlds, the famed THINGS FALL APART trilogy of Chinua Achebe continues to offer an insight into how other cultures operate and contrast with others' ways of life. In this second of the three books about the downfall of traditional African societies, Mr. Achebe continues his story of an African chief's family, as it tumbles from community grace and fortune, under the advance of Western powers' influx and influence, on the African continent.In this second novel, we find the grandson of chief Obi Okonkwo being sent to the West to study the white man's language, culture and ways. When the grandson, also named Obi, returns to Lagos, Nigeria from England, he secures a prestigious desk job that takes him far away from his cultural and ancestral roots, back in his bush village. But the long arm of his traditional community reaches and influences him, even while he tries to learn and accommodate to the ways of modern Nigeria. In the process, the new, young functionary finds city women, personal finances, white coworkers, his higher education and changing life habits to be an overwhelming challenge. Soon the younger Obi finds that he truly cannot escape his past, in order to satisfy his present life. As much as the hero Obi tries to overcome the demands of his new city life, he is ever pulled down into the morass of public failure, as he strives to be a modern, Western-educated Nigerian.In the conclusion, the inevitable happens to Obi, due mostly to his naivete about how to navigate the new Nigeria, as a savvy and city-experienced modern man of Lagos. The main character is a typical good guy caught between the old and the new. As a result, Chinue Achebe's trilogy are continuing cautionary tales about how one can appear as one thing on the outside but can also be quite another kind of evolving being, on the inside.If one enjoys the famed works of Mr. Achebe, other worthwhile, African authors are: Nadine Gordimer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zakes M'day, M. J. Vassanji, Abdulrazak Gurnah or Ben Okri. All are masterful authors about how Africa thinks and works of Africans.

Great book written by an outstanding literary icon, the late Mr. Chinua Achebe, also the author of “Things Fall Apart, and the center cannot hold.” A hero from my neck of the woods!

No Longer at Ease, in my opinion, is actually a better book than Things Fall Apart. Achebe does a masterful job of depicting the experience of an ex-patriate returning home after many years abroad. Such experience is universal, not confined to Nigeria or the main character Obi Okonkwo (grandson of the main character in Things Fall Apart).In adition to the ex-pat experience, Achebe inserts the peculiarly Nigerian experience, in which a group of British still retained some of the leadership positions in civil service while native Nigerians were mostly focused on politics. The moral aspect is also noteworthy, as the widely accepted corruption and favouring done by Nigerians in power was not mirrored by the British.Aside from the socio-historical aspect of the novel, Achebe is very sensitive in showing the downward spiral of young Obi, as he tries to fight against strong unreasonable traditions (such as with his girlfriend who is of a banished caste). Obi gets enmeshed in a vicious cycle in which he needs to show success, to a point in which his salary can longer sustain his lifestyle, which is forced upon him by expectations.I highly recommend this book, especially to ex-pats of any nation. As an ex-pat returned home myself, I feel many of the same difficulties Obi did. Obi's anguish and pain are crystal clear, and any ex-pat will relate.