Hedda Gabbler

The action takes place in a villa in Kristiania (present-day Oslo). Hedda Gabler, daughter of an impoverished General, has just returned from her honeymoon with Jørgen Tesman, an aspiring young academic - reliable but uninteresting. It becomes clear in the course of the play that she has never loved him, and she fears she may be pregnant. The reappearance of her former lover, Ejlert Løvborg, throws their lives into disarray. Løvborg, a writer, is also an alcoholic who has wasted his talent until now. Thanks to a relationship with Hedda's old schoolmate, Thea Elvsted (who has left her husband for him), he shows signs of rehabilitation, and has just completed what he considers to be his masterpiece. This means he now poses a threat to Tesman, as a competitor for the university professorship which Tesman had believed would be his.

Hedda, apparently jealous of Mrs Elvsted's influence over Ejlert, hopes to come between them. Tesman, on returning home from a party, finds the manuscript of Ejlert Løvborg's great work, which the latter has lost while drunk. When Hedda next sees him, he confesses to her, despairingly, that he has lost the manuscript. Instead of telling him that the manuscript has been found, Hedda burns it, and encourages him to consider suicide . She tells her husband she has destroyed the manuscript to secure their future, so that he, not Løvborg, will become a professor.

When the news comes that Løvborg has indeed killed himself, Tesman and Mrs Elvsted are determined to try to reconstruct his book from what they already know. Hedda is shocked to discover, from the sinister Judge Brack, that Ejlert's death, in a brothel, was messy and probably accidental. The judge appears to be blackmailing her. Leaving the others to discuss the situation, she goes into another room and shoots herself.

Africa

Chinua Achebe (b. 1930)

Achebe is considered the father of the African novel in English as well as one of the world's most acclaimed writers.

Things Fall Apart (1958)

Things Fall Apart explores the forces that drive the rise and fall of Okonkwo, a leader in the Umuofia clan and the influences of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on his traditional Ibo (also spelled Igbo) community.

Things Fall Apart is considered one of the major works in African postcolonial literature because it presents the life, culture, and complexities of a traditional African people with breathtaking honesty, dignity and humanity. The story of Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart has been compared in western countries to Greek tragedy, as the very characteristics that make Okonkwo a great leader in his clan (strength, inflexibility) lead ultimately to his death.

The title of the book comes from a poem, "The Second Coming," by William Butler Yeats, and is quoted in the frontpiece of the book:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.