Achebe was born in Eastern Nigeria on 16 November 1930. He was christened Albert Chinualumogu. His father, Isaiah Okafor Achebe, a catechist for the Church Missionary Society, had as a young man been converted to Christianity and had been an evangelist and church teacher in other parts of Eastern Nigeria before returning to settle in his ancestral village, Ogidi, five years after the birth of his fifth child. His mother, Janet, had also been a convert to Christianity. When Isaiah and Janet Achebe were married in 1909, the service was conducted by Isaiah Achebe's teacher, supervisor and friend, the eminent missionary and amateur anthropologist, G. T. Basden, who was to be the model for Mr. Brown, the more tolerant and tolerable missionary in Things Fall Apart.

Achebe describes growing up in Ogidi in the thirties as living ‘at the crossroads of cultures’:

But the ‘supposed’ parting of the ways between heathen and Christian was not absolute. As a small child, Achebe moved between both sides of his family, finding himself intrigued by the differing rituals and tempted by the ‘heathen’ food.