Chinua Achebe : the politics of re(re)ading the canon, and the ethics of writing back

This paper is a little ‘formal’ tribute to the fallen Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. The tribute I pay him here celebrates his literary and cultural legacy as a critical reader of the Western canon and a postcolonial writer. It also reminds Achebe’s heirs, i.e. African intellectuals, of their duty to keep revitalizing his heritage, and stresses three different ways of fulfiling this obligation.