Ezinma the ogbanje in 'Things Fall Apart'

Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel Things Fall Apart brought the Igbo ogbanje to world readers: Ezinma, a child believed to be a spirit who keeps dying and returning, and the medicine man who digs up her buried iyi-uwa stone to break the cycle.

1958 CE · 6.15, 6.87 · status: account

The account

Achebe drew on the beliefs of his own Igbo community around Ogidi. The ogbanje is the Igbo counterpart of the Yoruba abiku; in both, high child mortality is understood as the work of a spirit child bound to its companions in the spirit world.

Connections in the atlas

• Abiku, the child 'born to die'

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Ogbanje
2. Wikipedia: Things Fall Apart