"Achebe Has Achieved Immortality"-Pan African Writers' Association

The Pan African Writers� Association, on Tuesday said Chinua Achebe, the celebrated African novelist, had achieved immortality because the ideas he propagated in various works, would always endure. A tribute by the Association for Achebe, copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Tuesday, said �We will miss him as a person, but we will always be in the company of his ideas�. The statement said Achebe was one of the most original African creative writers as �his first book, Things Fall Apart, defined the subsequent books that were to appear. �His novel showed that Africans were capable of the best, and it inspired generations of Africa writers across the Continent to pay attention to their own history and culture, and not to see Africans as being inferior to any other.� According to the statement, Achebe explored in his works, various themes on governance, corruption, ethical relations and conflicts, among others. �He is a fine essayist. Thus he was a colossus, who deserved the Nobel Prize, and if the Swedish Academy�s Committee did not award the Nobel Prize to him in his lifetime, they can do so post-humously�, it said. Achebe, father of African literature, died last Friday at age 82 following an illness.