Things Fall Apart

The Igbo country of the lower Niger, where forest villages of yam farmers and titled elders meet the missionaries and colonial officials who came upriver. Achebe built the invented clans of Umuofia and Mbanta from the towns around his native Ogidi, near the great river port of Onitsha.

Okonkwo

Ogidi, model for Umuofia

Part One

The self-governing farming clan where Okonkwo rises by his own hand, taking titles, filling his barn with yams and ruling his compound by fear of weakness. This is the ordered Igbo world of the masquerades, the oracle and the elders, before anything from outside arrives to unsettle it.

Part One

inspired by Umuofia is an invented clan of nine villages; Achebe grew up in Ogidi, a real Igbo town, and drew the world of Umuofia from its customs, so we site the opening here.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗

Okonkwo

Onitsha, the Niger river town

Part One

The great market town on the east bank of the Niger, the real hub of trade and outside contact for the Igbo country Achebe drew on. It represents the busy river world at the edge of Umuofia's self-contained life, from which strangers and their goods would come.

Part One

inferred The novel's clans are inland and fictional, but Onitsha is the real river town nearest Ogidi and the commercial and colonial gateway to this stretch of Igboland, so it stands for the wider world pressing on Umuofia.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗