Home and Exile
In December 1998, Nigeria's most acclaimed novelist delivered this series of lectures at Harvard, in which he reminisces with pith and poignancy about his life and his art. The unfinished task of writers from the developing world, he warns, is to reclaim the history and identity of their homelands, long despoiled and denigrated by colonial dispossession. He concludes that "after a short period of dormancy and a little self-doubt about its erstwhile imperial mission, the West may be ready to resume its old domineering monologue in the world." With Salman Rushdie, he urges that "the Empire write back."
Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.