- A car accident in 1990 paralyzed him from the waist down. Since then, he has lived in the US because his medical needs cannot be met in Nigeria.
- Emeritus professor of English at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.
- In February 2009, he visited Nigeria for only the second time in 20 years, to speak at a festival of his ethnic group, the Igbo people. He received a hero's welcome, with huge throngs greeting him at the Abuja airport and following him around the country.
- He began writing in the 1950s, at a time when many African nations were becoming independent of British and French colonial rule. He felt that Africa's stories were being written by outsiders.
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