Chinua Achebe is one of the most acclaimed novelists from Nigeria, a republic in West Africa. Achebe published his first novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958, two years before Nigeria's declaration of independence from Great Britain. The novel, which Achebe wrote in English so that it would receive greater exposure, details the culture of the Ibo society at the end of the nineteenth century and shows the chaotic effects of colonialism.

(Harold) Athol Fugard, a white South African who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s, attempted to resist the racist tendencies practiced by many other whites at this time. However, at one point, he made his black servants call him Master Harold and even spit in the face of one servant who had always treated him like a friend. Fugard, who grew up to become one of South Africa's most...