Table Of ContentPENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
Arrow of God
Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large
village of Ogidi, one of the first centres of Anglican missionary work in
Eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan.
His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as
Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national
upheaval that led to the Biafran War. Achebe joined the Biafran Ministry
of Information and represented Biafra on various diplomatic and fund-
raising missions. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the
University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad. For
over fifteen years he was the Charles P. Stevenson Jr Professor of
Languages and Literature at Bard College. He is now the David and
Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana Studies at
Brown University.
Chinua Achebe has written over twenty books – novels, short stories,
essays and collections of poetry – including Things Fall Apart (1958),
which has now sold over ten million copies worldwide and been
translated into more than fifty languages; Arrow of God (1964); Beware,
Soul Brother and Other Poems (1971), winner of the Commonwealth
Poetry Prize; Anthills of the Savannah (1987), which was shortlisted for
the Booker Prize; Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays (1988); and
Home and Exile (2000).
Achebe has received numerous honours from around the world,
including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters, as well as honorary doctorates from more than thirty colleges
and universities. He is also the recipient of Nigeria’s highest award for
intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award. In 2007,
he won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Arrow of God
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First published in the African Writers Series 1965
First published in the African Writers Series 1965
Published in Penguin Classics 2010
Copyright © Chinua Achebe, 2010
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold,
hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-193068-8
To the memory of my father
ISAIAH OKAFOR ACHEBE
Preface to Second Edition
Whenever people have asked me which among my novels is my
favourite I have always evaded a direct answer, being strongly of the
mind that in sheer invidiousness that question is fully comparable to
asking a man to list his children in the order in which he loves them. A
paterfamilias worth his salt will, if he must, speak about the peculiar
attractiveness of each child.
For Arrow of God that peculiar quality may lie in the fact that it is the
novel which I am most likely to be caught sitting down to read again. On
account of that I have also become aware of certain structural
weaknesses in it which I now take the opportunity of a new edition to
remove.
Arrow of God has ardent admirers as well as ardent detractors. To the
latter nothing more need be said. To the others I can only express the
hope that the changes I have made will meet with their approval. But in
the nature of things there may well be some so steadfast in their original
affection that they will see these changes as uncalled for or even
unjustified. Perhaps changes are rarely called for or justified, and yet we
keep making them. We should be ready at the very least to salute those
who stand fast, the spiritual descendants of that magnificent man,
Ezeulu, in the hope that they will forgive us. For had he been spared
Ezeulu might have come to see his fate as perfectly consistent with his
high historic destiny as victim, consecrating by his agony – thus raising
to the stature of a ritual passage – the defection of his people. And he
would gladly have forgiven them.
Chinua Achebe
Chapter One
This was the third nightfall since he began to look for signs of the new
moon. He knew it would come today but he always began his watch
three days early because he must not take a risk. In this season of the
year his task was not too difficult; he did not have to peer and search the
sky as he might do when the rains came. Then the new moon sometimes
hid itself for days behind rain clouds so that when it finally came out it
was already halfgrown. And while it played its game the Chief Priest sat
up every evening waiting.
His obi was built differently from other men’s huts. There was the
usual, long threshold in front but also a shorter one on the right as you
entered. The eaves on this additional entrance were cut back so that
sitting on the floor Ezeulu could watch that part of the sky where the
moon had its door. It was getting darker and he constantly blinked to
clear his eyes of the water that formed from gazing so intently.
Ezeulu did not like to think that his sight was no longer as good as it
used to be and that some day he would have to rely on someone else’s
eyes as his grandfather had done when his sight failed. Of course he had
lived to such a great age that his blindness became like an ornament on
him. If Ezeulu lived to be so old he too would accept such a loss. But for
the present he was as good as any young man, or better because young
men were no longer what they used to be. There was one game Ezeulu
never tired of playing on them. Whenever they shook hands with him he
