THINGS FALL APART <i> by Chinua Achebe (Fawcett: $4.95) </i>

One of Africa’s most respected novelists, Chinua Achebe re-creates Nigerian Ibo culture before the arrival of European colonists. Although the life he describes is hardly idyllic, Achebe never apologizes for the conduct of his characters, who act in accordance with their beliefs--even when they seem cruel or arbitrary by Occidental standards. With understated irony, Achebe captures both the impotent rage of a warrior-chieftain struggling to prevent the dissolution of the world he once dominated, and the arrogance of the Western invaders who blithely trample native customs in the name of progress. Oddly, Fawcett has given this thoughtful book a lurid cover that looks as if it might belong on the novelization of “Bwana Devil.”