Tuesday, 27 September 2011

CHINUA ACHEBE REJECTS RAPPER’S US$1 MILLION OFFER
Amat JENG, writes from Abuja, Nigeria

World renown novelist, poet, professor and critic has rejected an offer from America’s most famous rap singer to turn his all-time fascinating novel – “Things fall apart”—into a movie, saying he would not sell his novel for a US1million.

80 years Chinua Achebe turns down Fifty Cent’s offer, after the rapper had made the plea of using the title of the novel for a movie he is about to shoot.


The novel – published in 1958 with the title Things fall apart -- has become Africa’s most fascinating and most read novel of the 21st century that depicts the temperament of traditional and cultural politics of the African continent. The novel is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and widely read and studied in English-speaking countries around the world. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first African novels written in English to receive global critical acclaim.

This development between two eminent personalities had prompted Chinua Achebe to change the title of the novel into what he called “All things fall apart”, making it look at odd with the previous title by the preposition – The.