Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’ now available in Ekegusii

The recent publication of the Ekegusii translation of Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), translated by Jane Bosibori Obuchi-Marando, under the title Binto Mbisebererekani (A-Frame Publishers, 2020) jolted me to deeply reflect on the motif of the ‘problematic centre’ and (creative) writing in general, and the translation efforts of literary works written in English into Kiswahili and other local languages.

Although Chinua Achebe’s novels such as A Man of The People (Mwakilishi wa Watu), No Longer At Ease (Hamkani si Shwari Tena), Arrow of God (Mshale wa Mungu) and Things Fall Apart (Shujaa Okonkwo), already exist as Kiswahili translations, Ms Obuchi’s Binto Mbisebererekani is possibly the second translation of Achebe’s novel into another Kenyan language – apart from Kiswahili.

Interestingly, despite the fact that Things Fall Apart (1958) has been translated into over 50 languages across the world – and sold more than 10 million copies, the work has not been translated into Achebe’s own (m)other tongue - Igbo language.

The poem by an Irish poet, William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) titled ‘The Second Coming’ has influenced many writers across the globe. W.B.Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Phrases and lines from the poem have been used in an array of works of media – particularly literature, film and even music.

When Things Fall Apart came out more than 60 years ago, it raised some debate among literary critics about language choice in African fiction. Achebe’s position that it was possible to transform English in such a way that it would represent African reality.

Real life experiences

Examples of works that draw their titles from Yeats’s poem include Things Fall Apart (1958), Robert B. Parker’s The Widening Gyre (1983), Elyn Saks’s autobiography, The Centre Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (2007) among others. Both Parker and Saks are Americans. The former, who passed on in 2010 was a prolific writer of fiction – primarily of the detective genre, while the latter is a law scholar at the University of Southern California Gould School.

 Her autobiography, The Centre Cannot Hold, is a narration of her real life experiences and the challenges she went through to reach the pinnacle in the academia – in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic at a tender age of 8 and given a ‘grave’ prognosis.

It can, therefore, be argued that the allegorical ‘problematic centre’ has over time engaged writers within and without of Africa. In his poem, W.B. Yeats writes: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mare anarchy is loosed upon the world.

This poem was first written in 1919 and first printed in The Diel in November 1920 and later included in Yeats’s 1921 collection of verses, Michael Roberts and the Dancer.

From 1919, when W.B. Yeats wrote his poem to 1958 when Achebe penned Things Fall Apart is almost four decades. In 1993, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who abandoned writing his creative works in English in the 1980s, published a collection of 21 essays under the title: Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom (James Carrey, London). The tone and echoes in Ngugi’s essays is a recommendation of a very simple but yet radical suggestion on how to confront the ‘problematic centre’: Why not move the centre?

Ms Jane Obuchi-Marando’s deliberate effort to translate Thing’s Fall Apart into Ekegusii can be interpreted as a reinforcement of Ngugi wa Thiong’os crusade of defending African languages in general and decolonising the African mind in particular. Ms Jane Obuchi-Marando, who is a career teacher, has written other works such as Endabasia Y’echinkwana Chi’Ekegusii (A Dictionary of Ekegusii Phrasal Verbs ), Ekegusii Nekiya (Ekegusii is A Good Language) and Emegano y’Abana (Children Stories), among other works.

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