Achebe Arrow of God

About Arrow of God

Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God (1964) is widely considered his greatest novel and one of the supreme achievements of African fiction — a tragedy of priestly authority, colonial power, and catastrophic misunderstanding set in 1920s Igboland. Ezeulu, the chief priest of the god Ulu who holds the six villages of Umuaro together, finds himself caught between the British administration, a rival priest, and the expectations of his own people, and cannot compromise his authority even when rigidity becomes the instrument of destruction. Arrow of God is the third of Achebe's five novels and forms the central panel of his Igbo trilogy with Things Fall Apart (1958) and No Longer at Ease (1960). It is more formally complex than Things Fall Apart and represents Achebe at full maturity.