Farewell to Chinua Achebe

March 22nd, 2013, 82 years old, the "Grandfather of African Literature", eminent Nigerian writer, Chinha Achebe dies in Boston, USA. He still held a chair as a professor at Brown Univeristy, in Providence, Rhode Island. For those, like myself, who admire his work as a fiction writer, poet, and essayist, it is a terrible loss. But people like Achebe don't die. Their legacy remains forever. Very well-known for his first novel "Things Fall Apart", Achebe sold millions of books and his work was translated into more than 50 languages. To me, one of his most memorable texts is "The African writer and the English language", published in 1975. There is one excerpt that I am in love with for Achebe's sobriety: "I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but al­tered to suit its new African surroundings", cited by a lot of writers and reserachers who are interested in the political and ideological consequences of the global spread of the English language. I salute Achebe! I say farewell to him, but I'm sure he'll be around still teaching the world how to deal with tolerance and mutual understanding through his wonderful literature. Farewell, Mr. Achebe. Farewell.