This may seem, to any literary mind steeped in the orthodoxy (and supremacy) of the western canon, an act of reckless equivalence. But she and I are lucky enough to be of a generation whose parents, aware of the need to supplement that very canon, made sure that Achebe, Ngugi and Soyinka were on the shelves next to Hardy, Austen and, yes, Shakespeare.
And now, teaching her select group of young African-Americans at a small private school in Virginia, it is Shakespeare she chooses to explain as exotic. The prospect of these children unleashed into the world with Achebe's protagonist Okonkwo as the standard and the Scottish laird as an example of how tragedy can also be told in "other places" is exhilarating. It also makes sense – two broken "big men" with deeply flawed personalities who bring about their own downfall; two explorations of society and family that face head on, with relevance for generations beyond their own time, questions of basic morality and the human stain. The permanence of the Scottish play is easily taken for granted. But I cannot help but think that without the audacity of Achebe's belief that the world was ready to read a story of Africa, by an African, from his own perspective, our literary landscape would be condemned to a bleak monochrome.
On hearing of the death of Achebe, friends – writers and readers both – have been in touch to exchange very African utterances of condolence. The great man is gone, says Ben Okri. Who will speak out for us now, writes Ike Anya. Each of us has a story of how reading Achebe revealed the possibility of putting ourselves at the centre of a narrative and allowed us to read in the first person.
In his debut, Achebe accorded the religion, culture and domestic economies of everyday Igbo lives a level of intimacy and humanity that rendered their experiences universal, boldly shifting the boundaries of perspective. When, in his essay on Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Achebe spoke of the prospect of rewriting a western view of Africa, he concluded: "Although the work of redressing which needs to be done may appear too daunting, I believe it is not one day too soon to begin."
This year alone will see international publication of books by writers including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Taiye Selasi, NoViolet Bulawayo and Alain Mabanckou as lead titles – with none of the "specialist" back-of-the-bookshop timidity that would have been evident even 10 years ago. While this tremendous reach of writing by Africans may have happened regardless, I cannot help but wonder just how much of it is because of the possibilities opened by Achebe's own life and work.
This was a life lived in the heart of a continent at a time of great political and social change. When Achebe published his first novel in 1958, Nigeria was two years away from independence. It was a country blessed with the economic promise of rich reserves of oil and a vast, ethnically diverse population. Though Achebe chose initially to write of the past, he did so with a realism that eschewed romanticising and challenged his readers to recognise a contemporary truth – that we were still far from regaining what was lost, and were in danger of losing still more.
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