Achebe's Language Choice

Achebe made a bold call: he wrote in English, the colonizers' language, not in Igbo. His logic — English could be bent into a tool for African expression, reaching readers across Nigeria's hundreds of tongues and the wider world.

Kenya's Ngugi wa Thiong'o disagreed. Writing in a European language, he argued, keeps colonial habits of mind alive; African writers should write in African languages. The debate is still open, and it cuts to the bone: can a colonizer's language ever truly carry a colonized people's experience?