Introduction: Arrow of God at Fifty

On March 21, 2013, Nigerian author and the oft-cited "father" of Anglophone African literature, Chinua Achebe, died in his home in the United States at the age of eighty-three. Achebe's death, despite his advanced age, sent shockwaves through the literary community, spawning commemorations, eulogies, and dirges that celebrated his life and mourned his passing across the world. In the years that followed, a series of international tributes bringing together academic and personal reflections unfurled around the globe, paying testament to Achebe's legacies and homage to his influence as a writer, critic, and thinker of unparalleled significance.

In 2014, mourning tributes blended with literary celebrations. In the run-up to the year that marked half a century since the publication of Achebe's masterpiece, Arrow of God (henceforth Arrow), Achebe's son Chidi contacted the University of Southampton, where Stephen Morton and Ranka Primorac, the editors of this special issue, are based. In 1974, as Chidi reminded us, Southampton had become the second university in the world (following Dartmouth College, USA) to award Achebe an honorary doctorate. The university was delighted to be able to recall this early link with the writer and enthusiastically embraced the chance to lead the way in the forthcoming Arrow celebrations—especially since the honorary doctorate may well have been instigated by the then Head of the English Department at the time, the South Africa–born F. T. Prince.

Around the same time, the idea for a jointly organized conference commemorating the legacy of Arrow—the work its author famously singled out from all of his writing as the one he would most likely be found reading—was formulated by a steering group led by Achebe's illustrious academic colleagues and long-term associates, Lyn Innes and Alastair Niven. They facilitated the forming of a planning committee, drawing in scholars and thinkers representing a range of British universities, including Birkbeck, Bristol, Kent, King's College London, Oxford, Royal Holloway, SOAS, Southampton, and Stirling—a sign of geographical and inter-institutional cooperation all too rare in twenty-first-century academe. Madhu Krishnan represented the non-Southampton members of that committee in the writing of this introduction. Inspired by the success of the international celebrations that marked the fiftieth anniversary of Things Fall Apart, the two-day event that resulted was titled "Arrow of God at 50: Celebrating Achebe's Legacies" and held at Senate House, University of London, on October 24 and 25, 2014. It aimed to capture the outpouring of international engagement with Achebe and his work since his passing and channel it into a fresh wave of literary and cultural reflection.

The Senate House event deliberately established links with other such celebrations across the world. Arrow's golden anniversary was inaugurated on December 13, 2013 with a gathering in Nigeria, convened by Chidi Achebe to launch the novel's gold anniversary year. That event comprised a dramatization of the novel, which we were lucky to be able to repeat in London. In May of 2014, the University of Stirling held a one-day symposium around the novel that leveraged Achebe's status as honorary graduate of the university. Led by Mpalive Msiska, John McCracken, and Angela Smith, the Stirling event coincided with the launch of a permanent glass display of words by writers associated with the university, notably Achebe himself. The London celebrations were preceded by the second annual F. T. Prince Lecture at Southampton, where Princeton's Simon Gikandi delivered a magisterial keynote address to a large audience. (He re-performed it in condensed form in London a few days later). Further events around Achebe's influence and Arrow of God included a teaching day on October 4, led by the Igbo Society at SOAS, University of London.

"Arrow of God at 50: Celebrating Achebe's Legacies" brought together writers, creative practitioners, academics, and admirers of the man and his work. Along with academic papers, the conference featured personal reflections on Achebe, on pedagogical interventions in the use of his writing in the classroom, and public engagement events open to the city of London...