Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe

The last big rains of the year were falling.

It was the time for treading red earth with which to build walls.

It was not done earlier because the rains were too heavy and would have washed away the heap of trodden earth, and it could not be done later because harvesting would soon set in, and after that the dry season.

It was going to be Okonkwo's last harvest in Mbanta.

The seven wasted and weary years were at last dragging to a close.

Although he had prospered in his motherland Okonkwo knew that he would have prospered even more in Umuofia, in the land of his fathers where men were bold and warlike.

In these seven years he would have climbed to the utmost heights.

And so he regretted every day of his exile.

His mother's kinsmen had been very kind to him, and he was grateful.

But that did not alter the facts.

He had called the first child born to him in exile Nneka -- "Mother is Supreme" -- out of politeness to his mother's kinsmen.

But two years later when a son was born he called him Nwofia -- "Begotten in the Wilderness. " As soon as he entered his last year in exile Okonkwo sent money to Obierika to build him two huts in his old compound where he and his family would live until he built more huts and the outside wall of his compound.

He could not ask another man to build his own obi for him, nor the walls of his compound.

Those things a man built for himself or inherited from his father.

As the last heavy rains of the year began to fall, Obierika sent word that the two huts had been built and Okonkwo began to prepare for his return, after the rains.

He would have liked to return earlier and build his compound that year before the rains stopped, but in doing so he would have taken something from the full penalty of seven years.

And that could not be.

So he waited impatiently for the dry season to come.

It came slowly.

The rain became lighter and lighter until it fell in slanting showers.