Chinua Achebe’s terse, unromantic narrative of one man, one-and-a-half clans, and two 
moments (precolonial and incipient colonial), set in an African village, scrupulously avoids moralistic evaluation. Instead, the strong but flawed gait of a too proud man carries the reader along though the ambiguities of tribal life and the arrival of a Western-led Christian church.
The reader surmises quite early that hope hangs on an unlikely scenario where reconciliation of the protagonist with himself, with his clan, and with the newcomers could somehow take place in the alternately shadowed and sunlit landscape that gathers all of these into an unsought encounter.
In the end, hope itself hangs, too sadly, too finally, too inexplicably for this reader’s heart to re-settle as quickly as it would like.
Superb.
Canter Bridge 
David, I have just picked this book up myself! I ran across it in Emmanuel Katongole’s excellent The Sacrifice of Africa. He reflects on Achebe’s narrative there if you have opportunity to pick it up.