Arrow of God

by Chinua Achebe

A priest, an officer, and the god between them.

For you if

you want to understand colonialism as a collision of two complete worldviews rather than a simple story of good and evil

⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡

Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.

Buy New on Bookshop.org

Supports independent bookstores

— OR —

Find Used on Better World Books

Secondhand & sustainable

$17 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.

Ezeulu is the chief priest of Ulu, the god of six Igbo villages. Captain Winterbottom is the British district officer who needs Ezeulu's cooperation to maintain colonial order. Both men are intelligent, principled, and completely unable to see the world through the other's eyes. Achebe considered this his finest novel. It is — the most nuanced dispatch from inside the moment when two civilizations tried to occupy the same space and both broke.

Where This Book Lives

Setting: Nigeria • West Africa
Voice: Written by a Nigerian author
Themes: clash of civilizations tradition vs change
Topics: british colonial nigeria

Related Viewing

Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.

Half of a Yellow Sun(2013)

dir. Biyi Bandele

Twin sisters, one war, two impossible choices.

Twin sisters from a wealthy Nigerian family take very different paths in newly independent 1960s Nigeria, until the outbreak of the Biafran War forces politics into every corner of their private lives. Adapted from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel.

Why it’s here: Punk in refusing to let romance and betrayal upstage the Biafran genocide it's actually about — political catastrophe and private life collapse into each other. Pedagogical in showing how independence's promise curdled into ethnic war within a single generation.

Letterboxd ↗

Same event, different angle

The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.

Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe