No Longer at Ease (Penguin Modern Classics)

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When is a man corrupt - When he takes his first token of bribe or when he is caught taking his Nth bribe? Obi secures admission to study law in London, not a mean achievement for he is the first in his village Umuofia to achieve this. However, in Nigeria where money is meager, the means to fulfill this dream appear thin. This is when the villagers who stand by each-other in strong kinship come to the aid of Obi and tax themselves heavily to collect money for his education.

Mentre nel primo libro il titolo si riferiva ad una poesia di Yeats (”The second coming”) in cui parlava della caduta del vecchio mondo rappresentato dal Cristianesimo, qui il riferimento è a T. S. Eliot Climax There are two climaxes in the novel. The first is when Obi finds himself in mental turmoil right at the point where he has lost Clara and his mother had died and the second is when he is arrested for having taken a bribe. The brother of a young woman applying for a scholarship comes to his office with a bribe - about half of Obi’s monthly salary. He rejects the bribe. Now the attractive young woman appears at his house, offering herself to him. He rejects her advances but realizes that all he is doing is condemning her to go offer herself down the line to the scholarship committee members. (He has a discussion with his male friend who insists that accepting sex is not ‘taking a bribe.’) He knows she is one of the best-qualified to get a scholarship but she risks getting displaced by lower-ranking students who offer bribes or sex. I rated ir with 2 stars and not 1 just because it has a good message to spread, but I didn't like the way it is written... or maybe my ignorance didn't allow me to catch it.There’s a tradition of young men having to pay a ‘bride price’ to get married. The government passes a law putting a ceiling on bride prices. The result? The bride price becomes even more expensive because there are more complexities in getting around the new government rules. (Probably an additional layer of bureaucrats appointed to enforce the new rules have to be bribed.) On the writing front, Achebe remained highly productive in the early part of the decade, publishing several collections of short stories and a children's book: How the Leopard Got His Claws (1972). Also released around this time were the poetry collection Beware, Soul Brother (1971) and Achebe's first book of essays, Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975).

The novel closes as Obi takes a bribe and tells himself that it is the last one he will take, only to discover that the bribe was part of a sting operation. He is arrested, bringing us up to the events that opened the story. Baslarda kitabi bildungsroman yani oluşum hikayesi gibi okudum. Obi'nin kendi ayaklari uzerinde durabilmesi anlatilacak gibiydi. Ama ileredikce fark ediyorsunuz ki aslinda tam bir "olusamama hikayesi".Obi dropped Clara off and she and the doctor left, but he felt bad and tried to go after them. His searches for Clara finally led him to the hospital, where it turned out she had complications from the surgery. All in all, she was in the hospital for five weeks. She would not speak to Obi, and left Lagos. Will he be able to resist temptation? The answer is NO. I’m not giving away any plot because the book’s opening scene is at his trial for bribery and the story explains how he got there. Obi spent most of his time with Clara and his friends, such as the louche Christopher, Joseph, and a high-ranking Nigerian politician, the Hon. Sam Okoli. He found himself in a great deal of money trouble, as he continually received bills and could not find a way to pay for them. Once Clara gave him a mysterious fifty pounds to help him out, but he decided not to use it and it was accidentally stolen from his car.

Publisher Published in the United States by Random House through an arrangement with Reed Consumer books. We are indebted to Achebe for reminding us that art has social and moral dimension—a truth often obscured.” — Chicago Tribune Illuminante, a questo riguardo, la postilla del traduttore che ci spiega innanzitutto come rispetto al primo volume de “Le cose crollano” ci si trovi di fronte ad un uso maggiore della lingua inglese, segno della seconda fase colonizzatrice. Le sfumature, tuttavia sono tanto molteplici quanto fondamentali. In general, Obi faces many temptations upon his return to Lagos. The setting was actually reminiscent of Cyprian Ekwensi’s Glittering City. Lagos of the 1960s must have been a mean place to live in, full of temptations and buzzing with energy. “Lagos is a bad place for a young man. If you follow its sweetness, you will perish.”Asking these and many more such difficult to answer questions is Chinua Achebe in his book – No Longer At Ease.