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Achebe’s fiction will recall from Things Fall Apart, in which Okonkwo’s uncle Uchendu explains to a gathering of his kinsmen why Nneka is one of the commonest names given to their daughters. ‘It is true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother’s hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland’ (TFA, 95). Uchendu goes on to castigate Okonkwo for believing himself the greatest of sufferers, by holding up the
mother’s Morrison_Achebe.indd 61 26/05/2014 12:03 62 Chinua Achebe hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland ... Is it right that you, Okonkwo, should bring your mother a heavy face and refuse to be comforted? Be careful or you may displease the dead. Your duty is to comfort your wives and children and take them back to your fatherland after seven years. But if you allow sorrow to weigh you down and kill you, they will all die in exile.’ (TFA, 94–5) His
him a literary frame of reference too (Zola, Flaubert, Carroll, Proust, Kafka, Mann), but Maf is first and foremost a philosopher and he scorns the poetic etherealism of cats, whose narcissism he cannot abide. Along with dyspeptic Jewish robins (‘Poor Limey Schmucks’ [O’Hagan, 2010a: 19]), argumentative Brooklyn rats (‘Summa us got woik to do’ [O’Hagan, 2010a: 69]), and easily pleased squirrels (‘Peanut butter … life is sweet’ [O’Hagan, 2010a: 98]), Maf ’s realm parodies that of his owner, undercutting human neuroses and vanities with the immeasurable pleasures of