No Longer at Ease

No Longer At Ease (1960) is a novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The story takes place in the years prior to Nigeria’s independence from the British Empire and focuses on Obi Okonkwo. Obi is a young Nigerian man who returns home after studying English in Britain and finds a job in the civil service. He finds himself situated within the conflict between African and Western culture, raising questions about his identity and worldview. No Longer At Ease is the second installment in Achebe’s African Trilogy, following Things Fall Apart (1958) and preceding Arrow of God (1960). The trilogy follows three generations of an Igbo family exploring the impact of colonialism and the state of African society in the years leading up to Nigeria’s independence.

Achebe remains a central figure in modern African literature, a prominent novelist, poet, and critic who sought to shift colonial literary depictions of Africa. He was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972 and the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2007. He was a professor of African Studies at Brown University from 2009 up to his death in 2013.

This guides refers to the 2010 Penguin Classics e-book edition.