Things fall apart - Chinua Achebe

'The story is the tragedy of Okonkwo, an important man in the Igbo tribe in the days when white men were first appearing on the scene... Mr Achebe's very simple but excellent novel tells of the series of events by which Okonkwo through his pride and his fears becomes exiled from his tribe and returns, only to be forced into the ignominy of suicide to escape the results of his rash courage against the white man...

He handles the macabre with telling restraint and the pathetic without any false sense of embarrassment.