Post-Colonial Reading of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Naguib Mahfouz’s Miramar and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Abstract

During the twentieth century, the word "colonialism" gained increasingly scornful
associations. Today, the history of colonialism is regarded as a predominantly unpleasant era of
imposition and exploitation. The African nations, under colonialism, were depicted as a source of
negations. Post- colonialism deals with many issues for societies that have undergone colonialism. It
discusses the dilemmas of developing a national identity after independence as Naguib Mahfouz's
Miramar (1967). It describes the ways in which writers from colonized countries attempt to articulate
and even celebrate their cultural identities and reclaim them from the colonizers as in Chinua
Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958). It also shows how the ways of colonized people have served the
interests of colonizers, and how the work and servitude of subordinate people are used ; and the
ways in which the literature of the colonial powers is used to justify colonialism through the
perpetual images of the colonized as inferior as in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899).
Some African countries suffered from colonialism for decades and other countries for a
century or more than that. It stood as a common factor in the collective subconscious of these
African nations that were hindered to practise their rights to develop and advance through the dark
decades of colonialism. African novelists shared the same ache, repulsion and distress that resulted
from the dark impact of colonialism; economically, socially and psychologically; especially on the
proletariat and middle class. Chinua Achebe , the Nigerian novelist and Naguib Mahfouz , the
Egyptian novelist had their own visions that go deep trying to trace the circumstances and
consequences of colonialism in their countries . They are two prolific and prominent novelists. They
depicted panoramic views of colonialism and the aftermath of colonialism through the first decades
of independence.