•Chimamanda
Leading Nigerian novelist, public intellectual and feminist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche will lead a cast of other artists, storytellers, poets and other workers of the imagination to honour the memory of pre-eminent storyteller, Chinua Achebe at the inaugural edition of the ‘Things Fall Apart’ festival which will hold in Enugu from June 29 to July 5, this year.
Organised by the Enugu based Centre for Memories, Ncheta Ndigbo, the event is a bold attempt to expand the annual ‘Things Fall Apart Day’, currently in its fifth year to a full-blown festival that best approximates the stature of Chinua Achebe in world literature, reports Nigerian Tribune.
Adichie will deliver the keynote address which draws heavily from the festival theme, “Masculine, Feminine, Human—The Dialogue of Complements in Things Fall Apart.”
Adichie who has been on a globe-trot, promoting ‘Dream Count’ her highly anticipated new novel after a decade-long hiatus, returns home to honour the memory of one of her greatest literary influences and explore “the Achebean inheritance”— a powerful reflection on storytelling, cultural rootedness, and the timeless dialogue between history and identity.
The festival theme further invites a critical look at the harmony and tension between gender ideals in Achebe’s work, anchoring it on contemporary conversations on identity, humanity, and cultural balance.
The week-long cultural immersion is designed to honour Achebe’s legacy through art, performance, technology, and scholarship with a re-imagination and recreation of the Umuofia village experience, dramatic performances and staged readings, saloon conversations with cultural thought leaders and immersive tech installations.
It will also feature an art exhibition, an essay competition for students in senior secondary and tertiary institutions and the general public, film screenings and guided memory walks.
There will be a special appearance by the leading actors in the major adaptation of Things Fall Apart into a television series in 1987 in which the Nollywood icon, Pete Edochie starred as Okonkwo. The iconic Ajofia masquerade which played a prominent role in the book shall also make a grand entry into the re-imagined Umuofia village at the festival.
