Joyce Cary's Mr. Johnson and Con-rad's Heart of Darkness discussed at length below in relation to Things Fall Apart (1958) also apply here; the theme of road building and its connection to the British "mission" and destruction of the African find expression in Mr. Wright's enslavement of and brutality to the workers. There are of course other writers on Africa, both of African and European descent who try to give a realistic view of the clash of colonialism with the indigenous cultures of Africa, and the abuse by tyrants on both sides of the people under their control. His Nigerian contemporary, Wole Soyinka, is one of them, and he and Achebe are really the giants of present day Nigerian literary accomplishment. Amos Tutuola, whose first book The Palm-wine Drinkard Achebe has reviewed, may have aided Achebe's awareness of the resources of his own Igbo oral tradition.

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