Representative Texts and Authors from Asia

Asia, the largest continent in the world, has a vast literary tradition in terms of scope and length of
existence. Literature in the Eastern hemisphere prospered and mirrored the developments in religion,
war, and politics. It is wise to study the Asian literature by geographical region.

East Asia
China, one of the world’s cradles of civilization, has started its unbroken literary tradition in the
14th century BCE. The preservation of the Chinese language (both spoken and written), has made the
immeasurable prolonged existence of their literary traditions possible. It has retained its reputation
by keeping the fundamentals of its identity intact. Poets like Du Fu, Li Po, and Wang Wei of the Tang
Dynasty (618-907), the finest era of Chinese literature, has produced world-renowned literary works.
Chinese writers in modern times are still creative and productive and have kept the Chinese literary
tradition prosperous.
• Du Fu
He is also known as Tu fu. According to many literary critics, he was the greatest
Chinese poet of all time. He wrote the poem “The Ballad of the Army Cats” which is about
conscription—and with hidden satire that speaks of the noticeable luxury of the court.

• Li Po
He is also known as Li Bai, a Chinese poet who is a competitor of Du Fu as China’s greatest
poet. He was romantic in his personal life and his poetry. His works are known for its conversational
tone and vivid imagery. He wrote the poem “Alone and Drinking under the Moon” that deals with
the ancient social custom of drinking.

• Wang Wei
He was a poet, painter, musician, and statesman during the Tang dynasty (the golden
ages of the Chinese cultural history). He was the established founder of the respected Southern
school of painter-poets. Many of his best poems were inspired by the local landscape.

• Mo Yan
He was a fictionist who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature. His first novel was “Red
Sorghum”, and still his best-known work. It tells the story of the Chinese battling Japanese
intruders as well as each other during the 1930s. It relates the story of a family in a rural area
in Shandong Province during this turbulent time.

• Yu Hua
He was a world-acclaimed short story writer and considered as a champion for Chinese
meta-fictional or postmodernist writing. His widely acclaimed novel “To Live” describes the struggles
endured by the son of a wealthy land-owner while historical events caused and extended by the
Chinese Revolution are fundamentally altering the nature of Chinese society.

More Essential Texts for Reading:

Thunderstorms (drama) Cao Yu
Family (novel) Pa Jin
Please Don't Call Me Human (novel) Wang Shou
Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio Pu Songling
(short story)
On a Gate Tower at Yuzhou (poetry) Zhang Chenzhi
Battle (poem) Chu’u Yuan

Korea’s literary tradition is greatly influenced by China’s cultural dominance. As early as the 4th
century CE, Korean poets wrote literary pieces in Classical Chinese poetry then transformations
1
happened at the 7th century. Hangul, Korean’s distinct writing system and national alphabet, is
developed in the 15th century that gave new beginnings of Korean literature. In contemporary times,
the Korean War has made a significant mark on Korean literature. In 1950, the themes present in the
literary works are about alienation, conscience, disintegration, and self- identity.
• Ch’oe Nam-Seon
He was considered a prominent historian, pioneering poet, and publisher in the Korean
literature. He was also a leading member of the modern literary movement and became notable
in pioneering modern Korean poetry. One of his works, the poem "The Ocean to the Youth” made
him a widely acclaimed poet. The poem aimed to produce cultural reform. He sought to bring
modern knowledge about the world to the youth of Korea.
• Yi Kwang-su
He was also the one who launched the modern literary movement together with Ch’oe Nam-
Seon. He was a novelist and wrote the first Korean novel “The Heartless” and became well-known
because of it. It was a description of the crossroads at which Korea found itself, stranded
between tradition and modernity, and undergoing conflict between social realities and
traditional ideals.
• Kim Ok
He was a Korean poet and included in the early modernism movement of Korean poetry. He
wrote the first Korean collection of translation from Western poetry “The Dance of Agony”.
Yun Hunggil
He was a South Korean novelist who won the 1977 Korean Literature Writers Award. He wrote
the classic novel “Changma” (The Rainy Spell) that on a post-war family with two grandmothers
and their shared grandson.
• Pak Kyongni
She was a South Korean poet and novelist. She wrote the Korean’s masterpiece and
internationally acclaimed 21-volume epic novel T’oji (“The Land”), wherein she chronicled the
violent Korean history from 1897 to 1945.

Japan has a rich and unique literary history even though it has been influenced by the Chinese
language and Chinese literature. It has a world-renowned poetic genre called haiku ( a short descriptive
poem with 17 syllables) and the diverse forms of theatre Noh (traditional Japanese theatrical form and
one of the oldest extant theatrical forms in the world) and Kabuki (traditional Japanese popular drama
with singing and dancing performed in a highly stylized manner). Japanese literature reflects simple
yet complex, imperfect yet abounding with beauty – the traditional Japanese cultural identity. In
contemporary times, Western influences take part in the Japanese literature, specifically in the
pioneering of modern Japanese novels, translations of the poetry, and reinventions of traditional
Japanese poetic forms like haiku and tanka. Playwrights like Abe Kobo and Mishima Yukio are Japan’s
notable literalists.
• Abe Kobo
He was a Japanese novelist and playwright and also known by the pseudonym of Abe Kimifusa.
He wrote the best-known play "Tomodachi" (Friends) which is a story, with dark humor, reveals
the relationship with the other, and exposes the peculiarity of human relations in the present
age." He also won the 1967 Akutagawa Award. He also won the 1951 Akutagawa Award for his
short novel Kabe (“The Wall”).
• Kimitake Hiraoka
He is also known by the pen name Mishima Yukio, the most important
Japanese novelist of the 20th century. He was one of the finalists of the 1963 Nobel Prize for
Literature and won numerous awards for his works. He wrote the novel “The Temple of the
Golden Pavilion” and won Yomiuri Prize from Yomiuri Newspaper Corporation for the best novel.
“The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”, translated into the English language by Ivan Morris, based
on the burning of the Reliquary (or Golden Pavilion) of Kinkaku-Ji in Kyoto by a young Buddhist
acolyte in 1950.
• Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
He was a Japanese writer and regarded as the Father of the Japanese short story. He wrote the
short story “Rashomon” that recounts the encounter between a servant and an old woman in
the dilapidated Rashōmon, the southern gate of the then-ruined city of Kyoto, where unclaimed
corpses were sometimes dumped. The Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s premier literary award was
named after him to honor his memory after he died by committing suicide.
2
 • Haruki Murakami
He was a Japanese novelist who won the international award Jerusalem Prize. He also won the
Gunzou Literature Prize for his first novel “Hear the Wind Sing”. It featured episodes in the life
of an unnamed protagonist and his friend, the Rat, who hang out at a bar. The unnamed
protagonist reminisces and muses about life and intimacy. Murakami’s work has been
translated into more than fifty languages.

Middle East
Arabic literary tradition has been flourishing in the Middle East. Islam is the foundation of culture
in this region - an essential component. Its literary tradition has grown and influenced others like
Persian, Byzantine, and Andalusian traditions. In return, Arabic literature has also been influenced by
other literary traditions of different countries. Even European literature followed and imitated Arabic
literature. In contemporary times, Arabic writers experience difficulties in producing their literary texts
due to the issue of freedom of expression and the tension between religious and secular movements.
Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad
He was an Egyptian poet, journalist, and literary critic, an innovator of the 20th-century Arabic
poetry and criticism. He became famous for his Abqariyat series, a seven-book compilation that
covers the life of seven of the most important Sahabah (the disciples and followers of
Muhammad).
• Taha Hussein
He was an Egyptian novelist, essayist, critic, and an outstanding figure in Egyptian literature.
His nickname was “The Dean of Arabic Literature”. He wrote the novelized autobiography “The
Days”, one of the most popular works of modern Arabic literature that deals with his childhood
in a small village, then his studies in Egypt and France.
• Ali Ahmad Said Esber
He is known also as Adonis as his pseudonym. He is an award-winning
Syrian-born Lebanese poet, literary critic, and is a leader of the modernist movement in
contemporary Arabic poetry. He was the recipient of numerous honors, including the 2011
Goethe Prize and the 2017 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in
International. Some of his famous poems are “First Poems” and “Leaves in the Wind”.
• Etgar Keret
He is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and
television. His 2019 Fly Already (“Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy”) published in English won
Israel’s prestigious Sapir Prize in Literature.
More Essential Texts for Reading:
Last Simile (poem) Abid B Al-Abras
Lāmiyyāt ‘al-Arab (poem) Al-Shanfarā
Cities of Salt (novel) Abdul Rahman Munif
That Smell and Notes from Prison (novel) Sonallah Ibrahim
The People of the Cave (novel) Tawfiq al-Hakim
A Love Poem (poem) Umm Khalid
Annumairiyya
Bin Barka Ally (novel)
I Am The One Who Saw (Saddam City)(novel) Mahmoud Saeed
A Thousand Splendid Sun (novel) Khaled Hosseini

South and Southeast Asia

India is the cultural giant over South Asia. Hallmark writings such as Veda, the Brahmanas, and
the Upanishads are the roots of Indian literature. As early as 1500 BCE, the Veda written in the
Sanskrit language introduced the birth of Indian literary works. Around the 16th century, written
literature in India appeared. In the succeeding centuries of British colonization, English literature
emerged that happen to be the significant influence of Indian literary traditions until the 21st century
period. Kalidasa is a notable and famous Indian writer considered to be the Hindu Shakespeare.

3
 The literary traditions of Southeast Asia possess the influences of Buddhist, Thai, and English
cultures, especially in Burma literature. Malaysian and Indonesian literature reflects a large part of
the Sanskrit language and Islam culture.
In contemporary times, India still manifests the impact of colonial rule through the presence of
the English language in literary traditions. Numerous Indian writers like the Rabindranath Tagore,
Prem Chand, Raja Rao, and R.K. Narayan are highly accomplished and internationally known.
Southeast Asia literature presents themes on colonial and postcolonial experiences in Burmese
literature and western literature influences in Thailand literature.
• Rabindranath Tagore
He was a Bengali poet, short-story writer, song composer, playwright, essayist, and painter. He
was referred to as “the Bard of Bengal”. He is a towering figure of world literature and the most
famous modern Indian poet. He won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature award for his book The
English Gitanjali or Song Offerings. It is a volume of poetry which is a collection of devotional
songs to the supreme.
• Dhanpat Rai Srivastava
Also known by his pseudonym Prem Chand, he is a famous Indian author of novels and short
stories of his modern Hindustani literature. He pioneered in adapting Indian themes to Western
literary styles. He wrote the most popular Hindi novel “Godaan” (Cow Donation) and considered
one of the greatest Hindi novels of modern Indian literature. Its theme was around the socio-
economic deprivation as well as the exploitation of the village poor.
• Raja Rao
He is an Indian writer of novels and short stories in the English language. His famous novel
“The Serpent and the Rope”, a semi-autobiographical account of the narrator, a young
intellectual Brahman, and his wife seeking spiritual truth in India, France, and England,
recognized him as one of the fines Indian prose Stylists. It won him the Sahitya Akademi Award.
He was also rewarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. His literary works in
various genres had a significant contribution to Indian and to world literature.
• Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan (R. K. Narayan)
One of the finest Indian authors in the English language, he wrote the Sahitya Award-winning
novel “The Guide” which was adapted for film and for Broadway. It was based on the fictional
town in South India and describes the transformation of the protagonist from a tour guide to a
spiritual guide and one of the greatest holy men of India.
• Chart Korbjitti
He is the most successful Thai writer. He was recognized by his publication of his novel
Khamphiphaksa (The Judgment). His novel was named as Book of the Year by Thailand's
Literature Council and won him the S.E.A Write Award. He was awarded the National Artist in
Literature (2004) and was among the honorees of the inaugural Silpathorn Award, given to Thai
contemporary artists.
• Nguyen Du
The best-loved poet and the father of Vietnamese literature, he was most known for his epic
poem “The Tale of Kieu” that recounts the life, trials, and tribulations of Thuy Kieu, a beautiful
and talented young woman, who has to sacrifice herself to save her family. She sells herself
into marriage with a middleaged man, not knowing that he is a pimp, and is forced into
prostitution.
• Tengku Amir Hamzah
He was an Indonesian poet and National Hero of Indonesia. His poem collection “Nyangi
Sunyi” is considered the most developed and shows the theme of God and His relationship
to humanity, fate, dissatisfaction, and escape. Some literary critics think that the collection
is an attempt to address the worldly problems of Amir. He was the only Indonesian poet
recognized internationally.
More Essential Texts for Reading:
In Custody (novel) Anita Desai
The Gods of Small Things (novel) Arundhati Roy
The Folded Earth (novel) Anuradha Roy

4
 The Feather of the Dawn (poety) Sarojini Naidu
Subrahmanyam
(The Nightingale of India)
The Caged Ones (novel) Ludu U Hla
A Crazy Man's Shoulder Bag Hmawbi Saya Thein
(anecdote)
Working Elephants (Essay) Kyi Aye
The General Retires and Other Nguyen Huy Thiep
Stories (short story)

Central Asia
Central Asian literature has different literary characteristics and political in culture. In
contemporary times, Russian influence continues to be present in Central Asia literature. Some
of the Central Asian writers and their literary works pave their way to be known worldwide.
• Abdullah Qodiriy
He was known by the pseudonym Julqunboy. He was one of the most influential Uzbek
writers of the 20th century and Soviet playwright, poet, writer, and literary translator. His
most famous work is the historical novel O’tgan kunlar (Days Gone By), the first Uzbek full-
length novel.
• Mukhtar Auez-uli
He was an early Soviet Kazakh writer and won recognition for the long novel “Abay” which
is based on the life and poetry of Kunanbay-uli.
• Chingiz Aytmatov
He was a Soviet and Kyrgyz author and the best-known figure in Kyrgyz and Russian
literature. “Jamila”, his first major novel was told from the viewpoint of a fictional character
that tells the story by looking back on his childhood. The story recounts the love between
his new sister-in-law Jamilya and a local crippled young man, Daniyar, while Jamilya's
husband, Sadyk, is "away at the front" (as a Soviet soldier during World War II).

Here are some representative literary texts from different Asian countries.

CH'U YUAN (c.343 - c.289 BC)

Chu’u Yuan, or Qu Yuan, was the greatest poet of ancient China and the earliest known by
name.

Battle
Chu’u Yuan
Translated by Arthur Waley

“We grasp our battle-spears: we don our breast-plates of hide.

The axles of our chariots touch: our short sword meet.
Standards obscure the sun: the foe roll up like clouds.
Arrows fall thick: the warriors press forward.
They menace our ranks: they break our line.
The left-hand trace-horse is dead: the one on the right is smitten.
The fallen horses block our wheels: they impede the yoke-horses!”

They grasp their jade drum-sticks: they beat the sounding drums.
Heaven decrees their fall: the dread Powers are angry.

The warriors are all dead: they lie on the moor-field.

They issued but shall not enter: they went but shall not return.
The plains are flat and wide: the way home is long.
5
 Their swords lie beside them: their black bows, in their hand.
Though their limbs were torn, their hearts could not be repressed.
They were more than brave: they were inspired with the spirit of “Wu”.
Steadfast to the end, they could not be daunted.
Their bodies were stricken, but their souls have taken Immortality— Captains among the ghosts,
heroes among the dead.

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and moved to the United States in 1980. He is the author of the New York Times
bestsellers The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed. Hosseini is also a U.S. Goodwill Envoy to
the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian
assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

(Excerpt)
By Khaled Hosseini

Mariam had never before worn a burqa. Rasheed had to help her put it on. The padded headpiece
felt tight and heavy on her skull, and it was strange seeing the world through a mesh screen. She
practiced walking around her room in it and kept stepping on the hem and stumbling. The loss of
peripheral vision was unnerving, and she did not like the suffocating way the pleated cloth kept
pressing against her mouth. “You’ll get used to it,” Rasheed said. “With time, I bet you’ll even like it.”
They took a bus to a place Rasheed called the Shar-e-Nau Park, where children pushed each other on
swings and slapped volleyballs over ragged nets tied to tree trunks. They strolled together and watched
boy fly kites, Mariam walking beside Rasheed, tripping now and then on the burqa’s hem. For lunch,
Rasheed took her to eat in a small kebab house near a mosque he called the Haji Yaghoub. The floor
was sticky and the air smoky. The walls smelled faintly of raw meat and music, which Rasheed
described to her as logari, was loud. The cooks were thin boys who fanned skewers with one hand and
swatted gnats with the other. Mariam, who had never been inside a restaurant, found it odd at first to
sit in a crowded room with so many strangers, to lift her burqa to put morsels of food into her mouth.
A hint of the same anxiety as the day at the tandoor stirred into her stomach, but Rasheed’s presence
was of some comfort, and, after a while, she did not mind so much the music, the smoke, even the
people. And the burqa, she learned to her surprise, was also comforting. It was like a one-way window.
Inside it, she was an observer, buffered from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers. She no longer worried
that people knew, with a single glance, all the shameful secrets of the past.
--------
The women in the part of Kabul were a different breed from the women in the poorer neighbourhoods
– like the one where she and Rasheed lived, where so many of the women covered fully. These women
were – what was the word of Rasheed had used? – “modern”. Yes, modern Afghan women married
modern Afghan men who did not mind that their wives walked among strangers with makeup on their
faces and nothing of their heads. Mariam watched then cantering uninhibited down the street,
sometimes with a man, sometimes alone, sometimes with rosy-cheeked children who wore shiny shoes
and watches with leather bands, who walked bicycles with high-rise handlebars and gold-colored
spokes – unlike the children in Deh-Mazang, who bore sand-fly scars on the cheeks and rolled old
bicycle tires with sticks.

The women were all swinging handbags and rustling skirts. Mariam even spotted one smoking behind
the wheel of a car. Their nails were long, polished pink or orange, their lips red as tulips. They walked
in high heels, and quickly, as if on perpetually urgent business. They wore dark sunglasses, and, when
they breezed by, Mariam caught a whiff of their perfume. She imagined that they all had university
degrees that they worked in office buildings, behind desks of their own, where they typed and smoked
and made important phone calls to important people. These women mystified Mariam. They made her
aware of her own lowliness, her plain looks, her lack of aspirations, and her ignorance of so many
things.

6
Representative Texts and Authors from Africa

Africa, the “Cradle of the humankind” according to scientists, has a literature that is filled with
the human spirit, desiring for freedom and contentment. African literature consists of oral tradition
and written literature ranging from local languages brought by the colonizers (English, Portuguese,
and French). The experiences of the colonization and postcolonization shape the African literature.
The oral literature of Africa such as myths, stories, riddles, proverbs, and dramas document the
exploits of the heroes of the communities, remind the people about their culture and traditions,
entertain and educate the youth. It flourishes across the continent in the 15 th century CE until the
interaction of Africa with Europe and Asia, their trade and cultural partners, serves as the main
contributor to the African literature growth.
In the 19th century, European countries compete for the colonization of the African territory to
gain political and economic edge. The colonization and slave trade has awaken the African psyche (the
soul and mind) incredibly. The literary works are the vehicle, specifically the newspaper, in exposing
the psychological social impact of colonization. African writers express their cry for freedom from
oppression through their poetry and narrative works. Though they use the European language to
produce their literary works, the cry for independence has reached to the climax, so strong and
effective, with the embodiment of the spirit of nationalism, gained worldwide acclaim. Numerous
notable African writers are Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Kofi Awoonor, Ngungi wa Thiong’o (East
Africa’s leading novelist), Okot p’Bitek, Nadine Gordimer, Dennis Crutus, Es’kia Mphahlele, and
Jacques Rabemananjara.
In the contemporary times, African writers experience new challenges with their new and sovereign
government. They still use their literary works as a vehicle in expressing their voices against their
government with a constant theme of corruption.
• Chinua Achebe
He was a Nigerian novelist, poet, critic, and professor and was honored as Grand Prix de la
Memoir of the 2019 edition of the Grand Prix of Literary Associations. His first novel and
masterpiece, “Things Fall Apart”, is the most widely read book in modern African literature. It
concerns the traditional Igbo life at the time of the advent of missionaries and the colonial
government in his homeland.
• Wole Soyinka
He was the first black African to be awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature. One of his
famous works is his first important play “A Dance of the Forests” which was written for the
Nigerian independence celebrations. It parodies the emerging nation by stripping it of romantic
legend and by showing that the present is no more a golden age than it was before.
• Kofi Awoonor
He was a Ghanian novelist and poet who wrote “This Earth, My Brother”, a cross between a
novel and a poem. It was told on two levels each representing a distinct reality. The first level is
a standard narrative which details a day in the life of an attorney named Amamu. The second
level is a symbol-laden mystical journey filled with biblical and literary allusions. These portions
of the text deal with the new nation of Ghana, which is represented by a baby on a dunghill.
The dunghill is a source of both rot and renewal, and in this way represents the foundations
upon which Ghana was built.
• Ngungi wa Thiong’o
East Africa’s leading novelist, a Kenyan writer who wrote the famous novel “Weep Not, Child”.
It was the first major novel in English by an East African. It deals with the Mau-Mau Uprising,
a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army.
• Okot p’ Bitek
He was a Ugandan poet, novelist, and social anthropologist who wrote the three verse collections
– Song of Lawino (1066), Song of Ocol (1970), and Two Songs
(1971). He achieved international recognition for Song of Lawino, a long poem dealing
with the tribulations of a rural African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wishes
everything to be westernized. It was followed by the husband’s reply, the Song of Ocol.
• Nadine Gordimer
A South African writer and the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She wrote the
joint winner of the Booker - McConnell Prize novel “The Conservationist”. The story is a character

7
 study of a successful South African industrial executive and, by extension, a critique of South
Africa.
• Jacques Rabemananjara
He was a Malagasy playwright and poet and one of Madagascar’s most prominent writers. He
wrote and published his play “Les dieux malgaches”, the first modern Malagasy play in French.
This play dealt with the pre-colonial past and with the coup that unseated King Radama II in
1863.
• Es’kia Mphahlele
He wrote the South African classic autobiography “Down Second Avenue” about the story of a
young man’s growth into adulthood with penetrating social criticism of the conditions forced
upon black South Africans by a system of institutionalized racial segregation.
• Thomas Mofolo
He was the greatest writer from the Sotho people in Africa. He created the first Western-style
novels in the Basotho language. His novel “Chaka” became a classic. It was a historical novel
about the story of the rise and fall of the Zulu king Shaka. Dennis P. Kunene translated the
novel from Sotho to English.
More Essential Texts for Reading:
The Invention of Africa : Gnosis,
Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge Valentin-Yves Mudimbe
(essay)
The Cardinals (novel) Bessie Head
Striving for the Wind (novel) Meja Mwangi
The Famished Road (novel) Ben Okri
Season of Migration to the North (novel) Tayeb Salih
To Every Birth its Blood (novel) Mongane Serote
The Palm-Wide Drinkard (novel) Amos Tutuola
Nervous Conditions (novel) Tsitsi Dangarembga
Mission to Kala (novel) Mango Beti
Up in Arms (poetry) Chenjerai Hove
Tales of Amadou Koumba (fiction tales) Birago Diop
Muriel at Metropolitan (novel) Miriam Tlali

Here are some representative literary texts from different African countries.

Chinua Achebe was an Igbo Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apart,
often considered his masterpiece, is the most widely read book in modern African literature.

Things Fall Apart (A Summary)

By Chinua Achebe

As a young man, Okonkwo becomes one of the greatest wrestlers in the clan. Okonkwo values strength
and aggression, traits he believes are masculine, and his worst fear is to be thought of as feminine or
weak, like his father, Unoka.
Okonkwo's wealth and status within the tribe grow, and he becomes one of the greatest men in the
land, with three wives and a large stock of yams. He treats his family with a heavy hand, believing that
the only emotion worth showing is anger. Okonkwo is particularly worried about his eldest son, Nwoye,
in whom he sees signs of laziness reminiscent of Unoka. One day, the clan settles an argument with
a neighboring village by demanding the sacrifice of a virgin and a 15-year-old boy named
Ikemefuna, who lives with Okonkwo's family for the next three years.
While living with Okonkwo's family, Ikemefuna becomes very close to Nwoye, sharing folktales
and encouraging him to enjoy masculine tasks. Okonkwo approves of his influence on Nwoye and
grows fond of Ikemefuna himself. Ikemefuna soon starts to call Okonkwo “father.”

8
After three years, when the oldest man of the tribe, Ezeudu, informs Okonkwo that Ikemefuna
must be killed, he advises him not to participate in the killing, since “the boy calls you father.”
Okonkwo ignores this advice, fearing that others will find him weak or effeminate, and he proceeds
to strike the killing blow when they take Ikemefuna out to be killed the next day.
Soon, Ezeudu passes away, and his funeral celebration draws the entire clan. During the burial,
Okonkwo's gun explodes, killing Ezeudu's 16-year-old son. Having killed a fellow clansman,
Okonkwo has no choice but to flee the clan with his family. Because the crime is a “female,” or
accidental, crime, they may return in seven years.
During their time in exile, Okonkwo and his family work hard to start a new farm in Okonkwo's
motherland, Mbanta. His mother's kinsmen treat them kindly, but Okonkwo is extremely
discouraged by the circumstances. He plans for the day he can return to his rightful place in
Umuofia.
While he works in Mbanta, the white men begin to appear among neighboring clans, causing
stories to spread about their power and destruction. When they finally arrive in Mbanta though,
the clan is fascinated but finds their religion ridiculous. Nwoye, however, is captivated by the
hymn he hears on the first day, and soon joins the Christians to get away from his father, who is
outraged.
When Okonkwo finally returns to Umuofia, the white men have changed his clan as well. Mr.
Brown, a white missionary who is popular for his patience and understanding approach, has built
a school and hospital, and many clan members are enrolling their children in the school so that
they can one day become clerks or teachers. However, soon after Okonkwo's return, Mr. Brown
leaves the country due to health reasons, and Reverend Smith replaces him.
Reverend Smith is uncompromising, encouraging acts among the converted clan members that
provoke the rest of the clan. When Enoch, a fanatical convert, rips the mask off of one of the clan's
masked egwugwu during a ceremony, the clan retaliates by burning down the church. Reverend
Smith reports this transgression, and the District Commissioner tricks the clan's leaders into
meeting with him before handcuffing them. The clan leaders, including Okonkwo, suffer insults
and beatings before they are released once the village pays the fine.
The morning after their release, the clan leaders speak of war before they are interrupted by the
arrival of court messengers. Full of hate, Okonkwo confronts the leader, who says that the white
man commands the meeting to stop. In a flash, Okonkwo strikes down the messenger with his
machete. Seeing that none of his clansmen support him in his violent action, Okonkwo walks away
and hangs himself.
When the District Commissioner comes to fetch Okonkwo the next day, the clansmen lead him to
his hanging body instead, saying that they cannot touch it, since it's an abomination for a man to
take his own life. The District Commissioner finds this custom interesting, making note of it for
his book on Nigeria, which he plans to title The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower
Niger.

George Moses Horton (1798 – 1884) is an African American poet who wrote sentimental love
poems and antislavery protests. He was one of the first professional black writers in America.

On Liberty and Slavery

by George Moses Horton

Alas! and am I born for this, To wear this slavish chain?

Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain!

How long have I in bondage lain, And languished to be free!

Alas! and must I still complain— Deprived of liberty.

9
 Oh, Heaven! and is there no relief
This side the silent grave—
To soothe the pain—to quell the grief And anguish of a slave?

Come Liberty, thou cheerful sound, Roll through my ravished ears!

Come, let my grief in joys be drowned, And drive away my fears.

Say unto foul oppression, Cease: Ye tyrants rage no more,

And let the joyful trump of peace, Now bid the vassal soar.

Soar on the pinions of that dove

Which long has cooed for thee,
And breathed her notes from Afric’s grove, The sound of Liberty.
Oh, Liberty! thou golden prize,
So often sought by blood—
We crave thy sacred sun to rise, The gift of nature’s God!

Bid Slavery hide her haggard face, And barbarism fly:

I scorn to see the sad disgrace In which enslaved I lie.
Dear Liberty! upon thy breast,
I languish to respire;
And like the Swan unto her nest, I’d like to thy smiles retire.

Oh, blest asylum—heavenly balm!

Unto thy boughs I flee—
And in thy shades the storm shall calm, With songs of Liberty!

10