From the first African Nobel Laureate, this is the first in a series of Olufosoye Annual Lectures on Religions, delivered at the University of Ibadan in 1991. Soyinka, in his characteristically stimulating way, discusses the religions of Nigeria in their national context, and other religions from around the world. The author says "At one conceptual level or the other...deeply embedded as an article of faith, is a relegation of this material world to a mere staging-post...then universal negation...Existence, as we know it, comes to the end that was pre-ordained from the beginning of time. Indeed, time itself comes to anend."