The volume of three essays from Oxford University Press seems so simple: 105 pages, not much these days when writers write long and editors don't have time to edit them down. Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe. So deceptively clear, like the clarity of morning light that cajoles you into thinking reality is right before your eyes. Achebe's text makes you blink and look again.

Manhattan disappears as the train follows the Hudson upriver. The world of purple hills and green pastures is speckled with small towns in need of jobs and a lick of paint, dotted, too, with leafy weekend houses for well-off urban refugees.

Opening lines are the initial portions of dialogue or text in a written book often constituted by at least the first sentence or a fragment thereof. A good opening. Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /srv/users/serverpilot/apps/jujaitaly/public/index.php on line 447. We provide excellent essay writing service 24/7. Enjoy proficient essay writing and custom writing services provided by professional academic writers.

The taxi drivers, idling at the Rhinecliff station, squabble over who shall have the fare. The winner drives the final 15 minutes to the house tucked up a path beyond Bard College's main entrance. Achebe, in his 70th year, has come to know as much about home and exile as any man can, much more than he would have wished. How far from bucolic Annandale-on-Hudson is his hometown of Ogidi in eastern Nigeria, home to the Igbo people who once, briefly, endeavored to found a republic called Biafra.

In 1958, Achebe opened outsiders' startled eyes to the Africa of Africans in Things Fall Apart (Heinemann; Anchor edition in U.S. Devil May Cry 4 Trainer Dx10 Pc Download. ), the first modern novel written by an African in English to enjoy large-scale success. More than eight million copies have been sold worldwide.

A dozen works followed: fiction, short stories, essays, children's books. But mention Achebe's name outside college classrooms and for many it rings only a faint bell. Home and Exile (Oxford) is the first solo work to come from the father of modern African literature since Anthills of the Savannah was nominated for the Booker Prize 13 years ago. A niece, over from Nigeria, opens the door. (Achebe's own children are scattered: one defending a doctorate in history at Cambridge, another doing the same in California; a third completing a medical residency in Texas; a fourth in graduate school at Columbia.) The sun-filled room is in many ways quite ordinary. Yes, there are several African sculptures, carvings with beads, the latest plaques from one of many universities wanting to honor a great man. But also a china closet stuffed with dolls and nondescript knickknacks, a fax machine, a photo of a beautiful daughter in a white wedding gown.

A quarter of an hour elapses before Achebe rolls in, in his chair. More than a decade ago, he was traveling to Lagos airport en route to a semester at Stanford. The car never made it. After the accident, he was flown to a London hospital and, despite months in rehabilitation, he was left paralyzed from the waist down. Then the invitation came from.