If it is true that legends never die but only grow and transmogrify, then the death of the African literary giant Chinua Achebe, at the age of eighty-two, on 21 March 2013, will do nothing to dim his assured status as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. Two months after his death, he was buried in his hometown, Ogidi, in the state of Anambra, Nigeria, after a week of funeral rites in the national and state capitals, as well as at Nsukka University, where he worked as an academic in the early 1970s. The ceremonies marked Nigeria's sense that here was a writer whose vision had shaped not only the nation's understanding of itself but also, and as profoundly, anglophone world letters. In 2007 these contributions were justly acknowledged with the award to Achebe of the Man Booker International Prize, which recognizes the full trajectory of a writer's career and achievements.