Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

As I read this book, I spent a lot of time thinking about the role of Okonkwo. While he has a number of flaws (his temper, for example), he definitely fills the role of a tragic hero for me. This book, like Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God definitely has an anthropological bent--but here that bent turns metafictional as the narrator reflects on masculine and feminine stories. Finally the book's critique of colonialism is both scathing and heart-rending.