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Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

Proverb quoted by Chinua Achebe, The Paris Review, 1994

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The story behind the card

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013), the Nigerian novelist, cited this as an African proverb in a 1994 interview with The Paris Review, and said that once he understood it, he knew he had to be a writer: someone had to be the lions' historian. He had grown up reading European novels set in Africa, such as Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson, in which Africans were little more than scenery. His first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), answers them by telling the story of an Igbo village from the inside, before and during the arrival of British rule.

Türkçe oku
Aslanlar kendi tarihçilerini çıkarana dek, av hikâyeleri hep avcıyı yüceltecek.
Chinua Achebe'nin aktardığı atasözü, The Paris Review, 1994

Nijeryalı romancı Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) bu sözü 1994'te The Paris Review dergisine verdiği söyleşide bir Afrika atasözü olarak aktardı. Onu anladığı anda yazar olması gerektiğini de anladığını söyledi: Birinin aslanların tarihçisi olması gerekiyordu. Achebe, Joyce Cary'nin Mister Johnson'ı gibi, Afrikalıların bir dekordan öteye geçmediği, Afrika'da geçen Avrupa romanlarıyla büyümüştü. İlk romanı Parçalanma (1958), bir İgbo köyünün hikâyesini İngiliz yönetimi gelmeden önce ve geldiği sırada içeriden anlatarak bu romanlara cevap verir.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Chinua Achebe
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