Additional Information

A discussion between Chinua Achebe and an assembled audience at Glasgow University. It opens with Tom McGrath introducing Achebe to the audience who are sitting on chairs in a circle around the edge of a medium-sized room with large windows and pictures on the walls. McGrath states that Achebe would rather the talk took the form of an informal Q+A and invites questions from the floor. Achebe talks about writers moving away from their community but still having a responsibility to that community. Questions are asked about the situation in Nigeria and why Achebe chose a Yeats quote for the title of his book, to which Achebe responds that he was showing off a little and that any similarity between the two authors is merely coincidence. Achebe also relates a story about a well-meaning missionary attempting to try and translate the Bible into a pan-African language by taking words from different dialects and putting them together - creating an artificial language in which it is impossible to be funny. Other subjects discussed include publishing in Nigeria and ‘the notion that the tribe is wrong and the nation is right’ and soldiers coming to his office in Nigeria because of something he had written. The camera is mostly static, with Achebe and a few others visible, but does pan round to show the rest of the audience at one point. It is difficult to make out a lot of what people are saying due to noise on the audio track, and the image drops out at about 2 minutes in but then reappears a minute later. The tape cuts off as an audience member is asking a question about education.