Published in 1960, the year of Nigeria's independence, No Longer At Ease is the second novel in

Chinua Achebe's trilogy that explores Nigeria's history through fiction. The first novel, Things Fall
Apart, details the period leading up to "pacification," the moment when British colonizers
violently took control of southern Nigeria. No Longer At Ease is set at the brink of Nigeria's
independence, some sixty-plus years later. This second novel vividly demonstrates the moral
destruction colonialism wreaked on Igbo society and culture. (The third novel in the series, Arrow
of God, is set in the period between pacification and independence, depicting the long, slow
death of Igbo culture during colonialism.)

No Longer At Ease is the story of how a young, educated Nigerian man returns home from
university education abroad, certain that young men like himself can and will eliminate
corruption as they replace the older, uneducated and corrupt Africans who make up the civil
workforce. But due to his own pride and lack of foresight, he soon becomes involved in corruption
himself. We learn how one young man, despite his pure ideals, will never be a match against a
system of power that relies on corruption and bribery.

What is No Longer At Ease About and Why Should I Care?

Picture this: you wake up one day and decide that nobody should pay with American currency
anymore. From now on, you and everybody else will get paid in bananas. Now, leaving aside the
logistical question of how you keep all those bananas fresh without turning all brown and mushy,
what do you think would happen when you marched down to the local shoe shop and plunked
down a bunch of fruit to pay for a new pair of kicks? That's right. You ain't walking out with new
shoes, friend. You tried to change the system, but one person—despite what the slogans might
have told you—just can't make the world change overnight.

Harsh.But this is the same hard reality that our protagonist Obi encounters in No Longer at Ease.
He returns to Nigeria, filled with big ideas about how to "civilize" his home according to western
standards. Little by little, though, he is shown the error of his ways. One person can't just go up
against centuries of tradition and practice, no matter how determined they are.

It might seem like a bummer, but this book will give you a valuable lesson in appreciating cultural
inertia. In other words, things that have been done a certain way for a long period of time tend
to keep being done in that same way. Change does come to everything, but usually it happens
gradually, and from within. So, before you go off and organize that Rally against Grades, check
this book out. It just may shed some light on how not to pull off a one-person revolution