Things Fall Apart | Literary Precedents
Achebe wrote his first and most famous novel partly in response to two works by European writers whom he had found wanting in their view of Africa: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson (1951). To quote his own famous essay on Conrad, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," the European sets "Africa up as a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe's own state of spiritual grace will be manifest." Africa's "triumphant bestiality" mocks European...
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