Which 1958 novel by Chinua Achebe centers on Okonkwo?

The 1958 novel by Chinua Achebe that centers on Okonkwo is Things Fall Apart.

Achebe’s debut novel follows Okonkwo, a powerful wrestler, farmer, and leader in the fictional Igbo community of Umuofia in colonial Nigeria. He has built his identity around strength and fears resembling his father, Unoka, whom he considers unsuccessful and weak.

The story explores Igbo traditions, family, justice, masculinity, and the disruptive arrival of Christian missionaries and British colonial administration. Okonkwo’s personal rigidity mirrors the wider social upheaval, but the novel is not simply a story of a culture disappearing: Achebe presents Umuofia as a complex society with laws, ceremonies, debates, and internal disagreements.

A common mix-up is confusing Achebe’s other novels with this one. No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God are later books connected to his broader African trilogy, but neither centers on Okonkwo. The title comes from W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming.”