Arrow of God Reading Order

Arrow of God (1964) by Chinua Achebe is his third and most complex novel — the one he himself considered his greatest work — set in 1920s Igboland in eastern Nigeria under British colonial rule. Ezeulu is the chief priest of Ulu, the god of the Umuaro clan federation, a man of immense spiritual authority who also has the power to begin and end the agricultural seasons by eating the sacred yams at the appropriate times. When the British colonial administrator Captain Winterbottom sends soldiers to bring Ezeulu to Enugu for consultations (and then detains him for two months on a political matter), Ezeulu's control of the yam harvest is thrown off: he cannot release the clans to harvest at the appointed time because he was absent when the months should have been counted. The resulting famine, as the harvest waits for Ezeulu to eat the required number of yams, is catastrophic — and when the Christian missionaries offer to bless the harvest without requiring the sacred ritual, many Umuaro people convert. Arrow of God is Achebe's most tragic novel because its central figure — Ezeulu — is not simply destroyed by colonialism but is destroyed by the intersection of colonialism with his own pride, rigidity, and sense of divine authority. He could release the harvest early to save his people; he chooses not to because he believes his god has given him an opportunity to demonstrate his power. Whether Ezeulu is right — whether Ulu is actually using him as an arrow against his own people to punish their accommodation with colonialism — or whether Ezeulu's pride has simply destroyed himself and his community, the novel refuses to answer clearly. Like the best Achebe, it presents a situation in which the colonial system creates impossible conditions and the Igbo characters' own virtues and vices contribute to the catastrophe.