Sometimes Even I Wonder What Google Is Thinking

Chinua Achebe is a famous novelist. His 1958 book, Things Fall Apart, is a widely read novel describing the effects of Western colonialism.

Anyway, in 1987 Achebe wrote a novel about the failure of African politicians and intellectuals, Anthills of the Savanna which is also apparently very good (I haven’t read it). But Google currently spits out this site as the #1 link if you search on the title.

In the early 21st century some organization or another came up with a top 100 list of African novels, and I posted the list to this website so I could keep track of it and gradually work my way through the ones that were available in English.

Anthills of the Savanna was on that list, which led someone to post a discussion group message in 2004 requesting “notes” about the novel.

And then Google indexed the damn thing and decided it was the #1 page out there about Anthills of the Savanna.

WTF.

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