Chinua Achebe has been credited with being the key progenitor of an African literary tradition, and his five novels have been read as tracing the national narrative of Nigeria. Achebe depicts pre-colonial societies disturbed by British colonization in the 1890s and the 1930s; the dog days of colonization in the 1950s; Independence in 1960 and the onset of neo-colonial problems of corruption and civil war; and, in his novel, Anthills of the Savannah, the pervasive sense of postcolonial disenchantment. Nahem Yousaf casts back over Achebe's writing career to assess his contribution to postcolonial writing and criticism. This examination of Achebe's fiction is carefully integrated with detailed discussion of the Nigerian national situation and Achebe's essays and criticism.