For his contribution to African Literature, Achebe was awarded the Margaret Wong Memorial Prize in 1959, the first of many literary awards. (Major 20th Century Writers 10) .
In 1961, Achebe became the first director of external broadcasting in Nigeria for the British Broadcasting Corporation. That same year he married Christiana Chinwe Okoli. They had two daughters and two sons. Achebe went on to write a number of other novels and short stories. His richly African stories re-create the old ways of Nigeria's Igbo people and recall the intrusion of western customs upon their traditional values. During the countrywide persecution of the Igbo in 1966, Achebe was forced to leave Lagos for eastern Nigeria (World Book 26). He took an active part in the struggle for independence. During the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70) he was in the Biafran government service, and then taught at US and Nigerian universities. In 1967 he was cofounder of a publishing company at Enugu with the poet Christopher Okigbo. Later he was appointed research fellow at the University of Nigeria, and then he became a professor of English, retiring in 1981(Kirjatso). Since 1971 Achebe has edited Okike, the leading journal of Nigerian new writing. He has also held the post of Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. There he met James Baldwin, also a faculty member, who was Professor of African studies at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Council at Anambra State University of .
Technology, Enugu. In the1990s he has been a faculty member at Bard College, a liberal arts school, where he has taught literature to undergraduates. (Encarta Encyclopedia 2004).
Things Fall Apart was Chinua's first try in the world of English literature, and it was his first great success. The novel was translated into over fifty languages and has soled over 2,000,000 copies (Encarta Encyclopedia 2004).
