The Penn State McNair Journal is published annually and is the official publication of the Ronald E

The Western novel, practicing imperialist Africanism, has historically othered Africans as savages. Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian writer, appropriated the colonizing West’s language and narrative to present the colonial encounter from an African perspective. Interestingly enough, both African and non-African scholars believe that Achebe’s novels inadvertently reproduced the essentialism that reduced Africa into a single complete discourse—a total invention of African literary culture. By analyzing one of Achebe’s most important novels, No Longer at Ease, this study argues that Achebe’s work presents a nuanced picture of both European and Nigerians as cultural others through the protagonist’s lived experience in Lagos after returning from London.