Literature has always been a window into the past, a critique of the present, and a warning for the future because we are creatures of historical habit. Some books entertain, but the really good ones challenge us—forcing us to question history, morality, and our role in shaping both. Today, I want to share two books that do exactly that.
Both Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara offer troubling, provocative narratives that tackle colonialism, cultural identity, and the moral ambiguities of human ambition.
If you want to understand how societies unravel under the weight of imperialism or how discovery can lead to destruction rather than progress, these are the books for you.
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: The Cost of Colonial Disruption
I first read Things Fall Apart as a high school student, and it fundamentally reshaped how I saw history. Reading it again as an adult, I realized its impact is even more profound. Achebe tells a story where he exposes the silent devastation of colonialism—one that is often omitted from history books like The Making of the West Indies, one of my school history textbooks.
At the heart of the novel is Okonkwo, a powerful leader in pre-colonial Igbo society. He is respected, ambitious, and driven by a deep fear of failure—a fear shaped by his father’s perceived weakness. Achebe carefully constructs Okonkwo’s world, presenting Igbo customs, beliefs, and governance in a way that refutes the common Western portrayal of African societies as primitive or lacking structure.
Then comes the disruption: British colonial forces, missionaries, and the imposition of foreign rule.
The tragedy of Things Fall Apart is that it does not present the arrival of colonialism as a dramatic conquest but rather as an insidious infiltration. The British not only imposed their rule; they divided and dismantled—eroding Igbo traditions from within.
What makes Achebe’s novel so powerful is that it resists the oversimplified narratives of colonizers as solely evil or of indigenous societies as wholly innocent. Instead, it shows how cultural misunderstandings, internal divisions, and imposed power structures cause societies to collapse.
Reading this book again as someone from a former colony, I found myself reflecting on the lingering effects of colonialism—on governance, economics, and even self-perception. The idea of one group deciding that another’s way of life must be erased is as relevant today as it was in Achebe’s fictionalized 19th-century Nigeria. We still feel the impact of that way of thinking now in our societies, even as we deal with modern imperialism.
If you haven’t read Things Fall Apart, I recommend it. Not just as a novel but as a necessary education on how history unfolds, how cultures are erased, and how we still live with those consequences today.
Hanya Yanagihara’s The People in the Trees: The Dark Side of Scientific Discovery
This book was an entirely different reading experience but just as powerful. If Things Fall Apart is a story of colonization through cultural erosion, The People in the Trees is about the colonialism of knowledge—how discovery can become destruction.
Yanagihara’s novel is loosely based on a true story, but its themes of Western exploitation, scientific ethics, and moral ambiguity make it a chilling read.
The story follows Norton Perina, a scientist who, on an expedition to a remote Micronesian island, discovers a tribe whose members achieve extraordinary longevity by consuming a rare turtle species. This discovery makes Perina famous, but with it comes a cascade of unintended consequences.
The Western world descends upon the island. A once-secluded culture is exposed to merciless capitalist greed. Science demands to replicate the phenomenon, disregarding the people whose lives it disrupts.
Yanagihara forces the reader to ask difficult questions:
- At what point does exploration become exploitation?
- Is there a difference between advancement and destruction?
- What happens when science is weaponized rather than used for good?
I couldn’t stop thinking about this book after I finished it. It’s a disturbing look at how scientific progress often comes at the expense of the powerless. Just as European colonizers believed they had the right to restructure societies, Perina’s discovery leads to a belief that the islanders’ resources—and, by extension, their lives—are up for extraction.
Yanagihara is a master at writing unsettling characters. Perina is brilliant but deeply flawed. He is not a hero, nor is he entirely a villain. He is simply human—and that is what makes his decisions so horrifyingly believable.
Where Things Fall Apart exposes the cracks in traditional societies under colonial rule, The People in the Trees reveals how progress is often just a cover for greed.
Why These Books Matter
Both Things Fall Apart and The People in the Trees deal with power and cultural destruction and the question of what happens when one civilization decides another is expendable, as Britain, Belgium, Portugal, France, and Spain did for the peoples of the Americas and African countries.
Achebe’s novel looks at colonialism through the eyes of the colonized. Yanagihara’s novel examines it from the perspective of those who justify exploitation in the name of discovery.
In a world where the past is still shaping our present, these books are essential reads. They challenge us to see history for what it was—not the sanitized version we were taught, but the complex, painful reality that still influences global power structures today.
If you’ve read either book, I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you haven’t, consider this your next reading assignment.
