Author of ‘The Measure of Our Lives’, Grey Atanda, wishes they had understood Chinua Achebe’s works sooner. ‘…not getting it crippled my own writing. If I had gotten Things Fall Apart earlier, I think, I would be a much better writer.’
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
My reading growing up was, as I would find out later, quite atypical. Unlike most people that I know, the only children’s books that I read were Nigerian children stories published by Lantern Books—simply because those were the books my mother bought me. So, none of that Enid Blyton or Roal Dahl phase for me.
It wasn’t until much later when I was in secondary school that I began to read American genre fiction
If you could rewrite a classic book/text, which would it be and why?
I can’t think of any. Rewriting a book requires a lot of love and dedication, I think. If a book inspires those feelings in me, well, I’d simply want to have written it.
That said, I do wish Americanah had been much shorter.
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