Tributes: Roger Ebert and Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe was considered by many to be the father of Nigerian -- and modern African -- literature. His novel, Things Fall Apart, which was first published in 1958 and has been translated into 45 languages. Mr. Achebe died earlier today at the age of 82. I had the opportunity to speak with him several times...and you can hear to my 2008 conversation with Chinua Achebe and fellow Nigerian writer Chris Abani below!
Mr Achebe was widely hailed as the father of African literature;  he rejected that. Instead, he repeated his favourite proverb: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

Though Mr. Achebe spent his later decades teaching at American universities, most recently at professor of Africana studies at Brown University, his writings — novels, stories, poems, essays and memoirs — were almost invariably rooted in the countryside and cities of his native Nigeria. His most memorable fictional characters were buffeted and bewildered by the competing pulls of traditional African culture and invasive Western values.

Transcript: Interview
Nigeria: Reflections On Chinua Achebe
Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'" Massachusetts Review. 18. 1977.

Chinua Achebe, Africa’s greatest storyteller, died on March 21st, aged 82



Roger Ebert’s career as a film critic spanned over four decades in print (46 years at the Chicago Sun-Times), television (thumbs up, thumbs down) and on into Twitter (which he embraced with gusto).  In 1975, he was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer.  He died after a long battle with cancer at the age of 70.  You can hear his interviews with Leonard from 1996 and 2005 below.

His debates with Gene Siskel, his longtime co-host on a succession of movie-review television shows, sometimes seemed to start before the introduction and often appeared to continue well after the credits rolled. He wrote reviews, columns, interviews and articles, an astonishing collection of work that spanned more than four decades with the Chicago Sun-Times, freelance contributions for magazines such as Esquire, CD-ROMs (Ebert's movie guide was one of the sources for the popular Cinemania) and rogerebert.com. He hosted festivals for underappreciated films. He gave running travelogues from Cannes and Toronto.

For a film with a daring director, a talented cast, a captivating plot or, ideally, all three, there could be no better advocate than Roger Ebert, who passionately celebrated and promoted excellence in film while deflating the awful, the derivative, or the merely mediocre with an observant eye, a sharp wit and a depth of knowledge that delighted his millions of readers and viewers.

Appreciation for Roger Ebert, the everyman's movie critic

A Critic for the Common Man