Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist best known for his first novel Things Fall Apart, published in 1958. The novel depicts Nigerian tribal life in the late 19th century and the arrival of British colonialism. Achebe criticized Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for portraying Africa as dark and primitive without human qualities, which helped justify colonialism. In his landmark essay "An Image of Africa," Achebe argued Conrad was a racist and his work dehumanized Africans. Things Fall Apart countered this by portraying a complex African society with its own traditions from an African perspective. Achebe aimed to give voice to colonial subjects and challenge stereotypes about Africa perpetuated in earlier Western works