This volume brings together essays first published in literary journals world-wide in the seventies and eighties, on writers of some classics of African and World Literature in the contemporary period, now considered household names: Achebe, Mwangi, Rotimi, Soyinka, and Tutuola. Critics discuss themes and literary movements including women's literature; language and the problems of communication in African literature; the link between traditional and contemporary experience; use of sociological material; and questions about the universality of a work of art. From the writers' individual relationships towards African culture, this edited collection attempts to establish a consistent literary and historical context; and to judge the writers' successes in their treatment of contemporary African society and its realities.