Arrow of God

Arrow of God, published in 1964, is the third novel by Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer. Together with Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease, it forms what is usually called The African Trilogy, as the three books share settings and themes. It appeared in the influential Heinemann African Writers Series, and its title comes from an Igbo proverb in which a person, or sometimes an event, is said to embody the will of God.

The story unfolds among the Igbo villages of colonial Nigeria in the 1920s. Its protagonist, Ezeulu, is chief priest of the god Ulu, venerated by the six villages of Umuaro. After a clash with the neighbouring village of Okperi, the conflict is abruptly ended by the intervention of the British colonial overseer T. K. Winterbottom. Later, the missionary John Goodcountry arrives and tells the villagers of communities that have abandoned their traditional customs for Christianity. Ezeulu refuses to become a chief serving the colonial administration under the system of indirect rule, and he is imprisoned.

On his return, Ezeulu refuses to call the New Yam Feast, without which the harvest cannot be gathered, convinced that this is Ulu's will. The famine that follows, the death of one of his sons and Goodcountry's proposal to give thanks for the harvest to the Christian God gradually undermine his authority, and many villagers convert. The novel focuses on the tension between continuity and change and is regarded as a work of African literary realism. It won the New Statesman prize for African writing and, in 2022, was included in the Big Jubilee Read list of Commonwealth books.