Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born the son of Isaiah Okafo, a Christian churchman, and Janet N. Achebe November 16, 1930 in Ogidi, Nigeria. He attended Government College in Umuahia from 1944 to 1947 and University College in Ibadan from 1948 to 1953. He then received his B.A. from London University in 1953 and studied broadcasting at the British Broadcasting Corporation in London in 1956. Achebe worked as a broadcaster when he wrote first two novels, and then quit working to devote himself to writing full time. Unfortunately his literary career was cut short by the Nigerian Civil War. During this time he supported the ill-fated Biafrian cause and served abroad as a diplomat. He and his family narrowly escaped assassination. After the civil war, he abandoned fiction for a period in favor of essays, short stories, and poetry. He later became a professor of literature in Nigeria and America. Achebe was the first Nigerian writer to successfully fuse the conventions of the novel, historically a European art form, with African storytelling. He is also the first major African novelist to publish in English.
