“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

Healing Insanity: A Study of Igbo Medicine in Contemporary Nigeria is an original and in-depth study on endogenous medical system in an African society. It is craftily written and provides solid insight, through case studies and theory, into how insanity affects patients and the society. Particularly, it explores various collective representations and strategies regarding insanity and healing as it examines the healing institutions, healers, and ritual cults. The central question is, given the patterns of healing, how do the Igbo shape the incidence and symptoms of insanity, define its aetiology, and provide healers with culture-specific resources and skills to address this illness? The focus became increasingly centred on bodily semantics and endogenous knowledge systems and practices. Dr. Patrick Iroegbu's work is a very valuable and rare study and has appeared at a desirable time. It is, for an African society, a comprehensive study of the many ways Igbo people, in their practical, routinelike attitudes and body-centred experiences, as well as in their more reflective aetiologic knowledge and healing institutions, relate to the phenomenon of insanity, or ara, in the cultural parlance. As the first of its kind, reminiscent of, and assured by, the various remarks of Igbo scholars and leaders at various meetings and discourses, the task this work has set out to accomplish is a very brave one. The author's account of his fieldwork experiences and adopted techniques illustrates his initiation, revealing him as a genuine ethnographer who is a "friend of people and at ease with his field." With both the far-seeing and inspiring analysis of Igbo medicine, life, and culture accounted for in the work, the book stands out for ethnographers, teachers, students, leaders, policymakers, and the general public. This is a book that deserves to be read as it shapes the critical path toward understanding ways of healing insanity in a culture-specific context, crosscutting perspectives for a relationship between indigenous healing and the biomedical sphere. Prof. René Devisch (Africa Research Centre, University of Leuven) This book is written with a clear purpose for everyone to read to understand and heal insanity and indeed provides a thick piece of cultural philosophy and vernacular of Igbo medicine in hopes of putting cultural wisdom in pursuit of integral health care development. Prof. Pantaleon Iroegbu (Professor of Philosophy, Major-Seminary, Ekpoma, January 2006) To read this book, as I did, is to get the benefit of Dr. Patrick Iroegbu's ethnographic insight for an archetypical African healing system in Igboland. It offers a fascinating theory of symbolic release that speaks of African symbolic action and knowledge system. Dr. Paul Komba, Esq. (University of Cambridge)

This book is a collection of essays devoted to Igbo medicine issues in contemporary Nigeria. Over the years, the author has through teaching, research, and publications made useful contributions to the field of endogenous knowledge and healing system. It provides constructive introductory infomation, analysis and method to understand how the Igbo and by extension Africa explore, give and apply cosmological, philosophical, and anthropological sense and meaning to ecology, life, fortune, misfortune, illness and health in the struggles of everyday lives. Readers will find the book not only fascinating but also ground breaking. Certainly, this is a book for everyone who appreciates diverse ways of healing to read and deliver the high impact message healers and patients embody and tend to give out in their world of illness and recovery dynamics.

Bendi is how the Igbo people of Nigeria live and practice African religion and culture which are beliefs, practices and institutions as invented by African ancestors.The trust of the work is that creation and revelation started in the Eastern region of Africa. At creation, the Almighty Creator made all species and put in them inclusive genes which have the potential for varieties.At the place of creation, the Almighty Creator revealed Himself to the people of the earth. The Great Crack occurred and the earth disintegrated and drifted apart. Human beings identified themselves along with their kinds and migrated along that line carrying with them the revelation experience which all shared and practised.Other issues discussed are general information about the religion and culture; etymologies; customs and traditions; one thousand proverbs; explanation of words, terms, and their religious significance; songs and illustrations in appendixes.The author is inviting Africans within the Continent and outside it, including the aborigines (natives), and others to embrace and practice the religion and culture of the Ancestors using Bendi as a guide.Read up more on www.ikenwako.com

Healing Insanity: A Study of Igbo Medicine in Contemporary Nigeria is an original and in-depth study on endogenous medical system in an African society. It is craftily written and provides solid insight, through case studies and theory, into how insanity affects patients and the society. Particularly, it explores various collective representations and strategies regarding insanity and healing as it examines the healing institutions, healers, and ritual cults. The central question is, given the patterns of healing, how do the Igbo shape the incidence and symptoms of insanity, define its aetiology, and provide healers with culture-specific resources and skills to address this illness? The focus became increasingly centred on bodily semantics and endogenous knowledge systems and practices. Dr. Patrick Iroegbus work is a very valuable and rare study and has appeared at a desirable time. It is, for an African society, a comprehensive study of the many ways Igbo people, in their practical, routinelike attitudes and body-centred experiences, as well as in their more reflective aetiologic knowledge and healing institutions, relate to the phenomenon of insanity, or ara, in the cultural parlance. As the first of its kind, reminiscent of, and assured by, the various remarks of Igbo scholars and leaders at various meetings and discourses, the task this work has set out to accomplish is a very brave one. The authors account of his fieldwork experiences and adopted techniques illustrates his initiation, revealing him as a genuine ethnographer who is a friend of people and at ease with his field. With both the far-seeing and inspiring analysis of Igbo medicine, life, and culture accounted for in the work, the book stands out for ethnographers, teachers, students, leaders, policymakers, and the general public. This is a book that deserves to be read as it shapes the critical path toward understanding ways of healing insanity in a culture-specific context, crosscutting perspectives for a relationship between indigenous healing and the biomedical sphere. Prof. Ren Devisch (Africa Research Centre, University of Leuven) This book is written with a clear purpose for everyone to readto understand and heal insanityand indeed provides a thick piece of cultural philosophy and vernacular of Igbo medicine in hopes of putting cultural wisdom in pursuit of integral health care development. Prof. Pantaleon Iroegbu (Professor of Philosophy, Major-Seminary, Ekpoma, January 2006) To read this book, as I did, is to get the benefit of Dr. Patrick Iroegbus ethnographic insight for an archetypical African healing system in Igboland. It offers a fascinating theory of symbolic release that speaks of African symbolic action and knowledge system. Dr. Paul Komba, Esq. (University of Cambridge)

This book examines an indigenous Africa-centric business model practised by the Igbos of south-eastern Nigeria for decades. The unique framework and rules of operation, collectively referred to as the Igbo-Traditional Business School (I-TBS) in this book, is underpinned by the ‘Igba-boi’ apprenticeship.

Ohadike (Cornell U.) examines the organization and strength of African resistance movements against European colonialism with particular reference to the small-scale communities. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR