Reading Order
Anthills of the Savannah Reading Order
Anthills of the Savannah (1987) by Chinua Achebe is his final novel — the work he produced after a twenty-one year silence following Arrow of God (1964), and the novel in which he fully confronted the post-independence African political disaster he had spent his career approaching. Set in the fictional West African state of Kangan (clearly Nigeria), it follows three childhood friends who occupy key positions in a military dictatorship: Sam, the Head of State; Chris, the Commissioner for Information; and Ikem, the editor of the National Gazette. When Ikem publishes an editorial critical of the government, the dictatorship's logic of self-preservation drives the three men apart and ultimately destroys all of them. Achebe wrote Anthills of the Savannah after the Nigerian Civil War (the Biafran War, 1967-1970), in which he had taken the Biafran side and lost; after a car accident in 1990 that left him paralyzed from the waist down; and in the context of a Nigeria that had been through multiple coups, oil wealth and oil corruption, and the failure of every promise of independence. The novel is both a political anatomy of the military dictatorship (Achebe draws on the specific mechanisms of Nigerian military governments) and a meditation on the role of the writer — represented by Ikem — in a state that controls information and punishes dissent. The title comes from an observation by the novel's wise elder Elewa's grandmother: the anthills survive the devastating grass fire of the savannah season, and the story of what happened lives in them. The story — preserved, witnessed, told — is what survives.
Where to start
Anthills of the Savannah — any edition. The novel is more accessible than Arrow of God and can be read without prior knowledge of Achebe's other fiction, though the trilogy's sweep is more fully available if you have read Things Fall Apart first.
Complete Anthills of the Savannah Book List
- 1Buy
Anthills of the Savannah
Chinua Achebe·1987·The novel — Chris, Ikem, and Sam in the fictional dictatorship of Kangan; the story as the thing that survives the fire. - 2Buy
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe·1958·Achebe's first novel and the beginning of the arc — the Igbo world before colonialism; the foundation of the literary project that Anthills of the Savannah completes. - 3Buy
Arrow of God
Chinua Achebe·1964·Achebe's preceding novel and his most complex — Ezeulu in 1920s Igboland; the colonial encounter in its middle phase, the last major work before the twenty-one-year silence. - 4Buy
A Man of the People
Chinua Achebe·1966·Achebe's fourth novel — political satire of post-independence Nigeria published just before a coup; the direct predecessor to Anthills of the Savannah in its engagement with Nigerian political corruption. - 5Buy
Petals of Blood
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o·1977·Ngũgĩ's Kenyan novel of post-independence betrayal — the essential East African companion; the same diagnosis of neo-colonial political corruption in a different national context. - 6Buy
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Ayi Kwei Armah·1968·Armah's Ghanaian novel of post-independence corruption — the West African companion; published the year after the coup that The Beautyful Ones anticipated, as Anthills of the Savannah was produced after Nigeria's many coups. - 7Buy
Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie·2006·Adichie's Biafran War novel — the war that shaped the Nigeria of Anthills of the Savannah; the next generation's fictional account of the catastrophe Achebe lived through. - 8Buy
Weep Not, Child
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o·1964·Ngũgĩ's first novel of Kenyan colonial violence — published the same year as Arrow of God; the regional parallel showing how the colonial encounter produced the political conditions that Anthills of the Savannah anatomizes.
Anthills of the Savannah — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Anthills of the Savannah about?
Anthills of the Savannah is set in Kangan, a fictional West African nation (clearly modeled on Nigeria), governed by a military dictatorship under Sam, the Head of State — a childhood friend of the novel's two protagonists. Chris is the Commissioner for Information and Sam's informal publicist; Ikem is the editor of the National Gazette and a poet and public intellectual who publishes an editorial critical of the government after it refuses to fund development in the Abazon province. The novel follows the consequences: Ikem is dismissed, then arrested and killed; Chris goes into hiding and eventually flees toward the north; a young woman named Beatrice, a civil servant who has relationships with both men, becomes the center through which the novel's thematic concerns are expressed. The novel ends with Sam's assassination in a coup, and with a naming ceremony for the child of Elewa (Ikem's girlfriend) — hope in the midst of catastrophe.
What is the significance of the title Anthills of the Savannah?
The title comes from a speech by Elewa's grandmother at the naming ceremony near the novel's end: she describes how the anthills survive the devastating dry-season fire that burns the savannah grass. The anthill survives because it is made of different material — harder, more resistant — than the grass around it. Achebe uses this image to describe the function of story and witness: after the political fire has burned through (the coup, the assassinations, the violence), what survives is the story — the account of what happened, preserved in those who witnessed it and who tell it. Ikem's writing, Chris's witness, Beatrice's narration: these are the anthills that survive. The image is both an elegy for what was lost and an affirmation of the writer's role in preserving the memory of what happened.
How does Anthills of the Savannah engage with the role of the writer?
Ikem — the editor, poet, and public intellectual who is eventually killed by the dictatorship — is Achebe's most direct examination of the writer's role in a repressive political state. Ikem believes in the power of story and witness: in his last public speech (to the students of Bassa University), he argues that the writer's role is not to provide solutions but to 'challenge comfortable thoughts and ways of thinking.' He is killed for this function. But the novel also asks whether Ikem's idealism is adequate to the political reality he faces: Chris, the more pragmatic politician-intellectual, suggests that pure artistic witness is a luxury that a dictatorship does not permit. Achebe does not resolve this tension — Ikem is killed, Chris is also killed, and the question of what the writer can usefully do in a political crisis remains open.
What happened to Achebe between Arrow of God (1964) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987)?
The twenty-one-year gap between Arrow of God and Anthills of the Savannah was filled with significant events in Achebe's life and Nigeria's. Most importantly, Achebe supported the Biafran cause during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) — he travelled internationally as a Biafran ambassador, writing and speaking about the war. The Biafran side lost, and the genocide of Igbo civilians by the Nigerian military during the war was a catastrophe for Achebe's people. After the war, Achebe returned to Nigeria and wrote poetry, essays, and criticism rather than fiction. During this period he also published Things Fall Apart and other early novels in new editions with critical apparatus. Anthills of the Savannah emerged from this period of non-fiction activity as Achebe's engagement with the political failure of post-civil-war Nigeria.
What should I read after Anthills of the Savannah?
After Anthills of the Savannah, Achebe's non-fiction — particularly Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975), Hopes and Impediments (1988), and There Was a Country (2012, his memoir of the Biafran War) — is essential. His earlier novels, particularly A Man of the People (1966), provide the political context for Anthills. For contemporary Nigerian fiction that continues his project, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) are the most important. For comparable African political fiction, Ngũgĩ's Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross are the essential East African companions.
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