Africa’s most widely read writer, Chinua Achebe, will be buried on May 23, 2013 in his hometown, Ogidi, in Anambra State, Nigeria.Achebe died on March 21 at a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, after a brief illness.He was 82 years old. Until his death, Achebe was the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor of Africana Studies and Literary Arts at Brown University, an American Ivy-league institution, located in Providence, Rhode Island.
According to his two sons, Ike and Chidi Achebe, the late literary master and author of such contemporary classics as Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God will be buried according to Christian rites. Achebe’s family also disclosed that several committees, including an international one made of eminent literary and cultural figures, were being invited for the late writer’s funeral as well as numerous activities to celebrate his life and work.
Members of the International Community include retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South, Ruth Simmons, the immediate past President of Brown University, Johnetta B. Cole, a former President of Spellman College in Atlanta, Georgia, and two Nobel laureates in literature, Nadine Gordimer (of South Africa) and Toni Morrison of the US.
An Achebe family source disclosed that a memorial service and celebration of life has been scheduled on June 2, 2013 in Washington DC, to honour the late writer, whose Things Fall Apart has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and been translated into close to 60 languages.
The source indicated that there was a central national committee made up of eminent people from all parts of Nigeria to coordinate funeral activities planned in different locations and states in Nigeria.
Achebe’s death has generated outpourings of sympathy from around the globe; including formal proclamations in his honour from government entities in Nigeria, the US, South Africa and Jamaica as well as tributes from writers and writers’ organisations worldwide
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