A young Nigerian medical student on a prestigious scholarship read a European novel that depicted Africans as buffoons or savages, and walked away from medicine to become a writer. This episode traces Chinua Achebe from his 1930 birth in Ogidi, where his evangelist father and his traditionalist great-uncle gave him two ways of seeing the world, through Igbo folktales and masquerades, to the University of Ibadan and the decision that cost him his scholarship and required his brother's help with tuition.

We look at how radio scriptwriting at the Nigerian Broadcasting Service gave him an ear for spoken rhythm, why he made his protagonist a yam farmer, and how the single handwritten manuscript of his 1958 debut nearly vanished in a London typing agency. The conversation covers his work championing other African writers as a series editor, the 1 ...