The Nigerian writer and professor Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) is considered a key figure in modern African literature, who told stories so typical of that continent, that they transcended stereotypes and reached the entire world.
It is said that the famous phrase «As long as lions have no historians, hunting stories will glorify the hunter«, It is an ancient African proverb that he made famous, using it to point out that the winners are always the ones who shape history, and how the dominant groups impose themselves on the others in the story.
Achebe was raised in the Igbo village of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria in colonial times. It was influenced by the traditional culture of the place, as well as by the Christianity that the foreign settlers had brought.
His first novel, «Everything falls apart» (1958), is his most famous work and the most read book of modern African literature. It is inspired by the idea of how European civilization appropriates the African world and Western influences change local society in what was a classic of postcolonial literature.
Achebe wrote more than twenty works, some openly critical of the politics and politicians of Nigeria, from whose Anambra state he was a native.
The author wrote novels in English and also defended the use of this language (the language of the colonizers) in African literature, due to pragmatic, political and creative issues. He considered English to be a unifying tool to reach a larger audience and used it strategically.
«Everything falls apart» was translated into more than 50 languagesand served to reveal how the traditions of Igbo society were tense with Western values brought by colonialism.
The phrase that stars in these lines condenses a well-synthesized depth, which points to a central question: whoever tells the facts does so from their perspective. Shaken by his daily life and the colonial influence on his culture, he proposes the metaphor of lions hunted by hunters, without them being able to tell their story.
They are the victors, the conquerors or the powerful, those who They have more resources to record and make transcend an idea or story. Transmitting your vision to future generations is a complicated task in the midst of this inequality.
In the metaphor, hunters are those who represent powerwithout the lions (symbol of the weakest people) being able to write their own history. If the lion could tell the same story, perhaps it would have very different versions of the same event to tell about the hunters (invaders).
The reflection has special relevance in the context of African colonial history, a theme that ran through much of Achebe’s work, but the scope of the phrase goes far beyond Africa. It can be applied where war conflicts only deepen injustices and where political disputes or dictatorships do not allow the people to be truly free.
