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

Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), has been translated by Jane Bosibori Obuchi-Marando, under the title Binto Mbisebererekani (A-Frame Publishers, 2020) in recent publication in Ekegusii language.
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, however Ms Obuchi’s Binto Mbisebererekani is possibly the second translation of Achebe’s novel into another Kenyan language – apart from Kiswahili.

Interestingly, despite the literary work being 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.

In the advent of  Things Fall Apart more than 60 years ago, it raised a debate within the literary community about language choice in African fiction.
More because of the late literary giants position that it was possible to transform English in such a way that it would represent African reality.

From 1919, when W.B. Yeats wrote his poem in 1958 when Achebe penned Things Fall Apart for 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 effort to translate Things Fall Apart experience into Ekegusii can be seen as an endorsement of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s crusade of defending African languages in general and decolonising the African mind in particular.

Ms Jane Obuchi-Marando, 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.

More kudos to her for embarking on this library expedition that expands the frontiers of the African experience and strengthens our heritage through language.