The foreign correspondent is frequently the only means of getting an important story told, or of drawing the world's attention to disasters in the making or being covered up. Such an important role is risky in more ways than one. It can expose the correspondent to actual physical danger; but there is also the moral danger of indulging in sensationalism and dehumanizing the sufferer. This danger immediately raises the question of the character and attitude of the correspondent, because the same qualities of mind which in the past separated a Conrad from a Livingstone, or a Gainsborough from the anonymous painter of Francis Williams, are still present and active in the world today. Perhaps this difference can best be put in one phrase: the presence or absence of respect for the human person.

The lecture caused a storm of controversy even at the reception immediately following his talk. In his essay "The African Writer and the English Language" he discusses how the process of colonialism – for all its ills – provided colonised people from varying linguistic backgrounds "a language with which to talk to one another". His essay "A Bloody Racist: About Achebe's View of Conrad" defends Heart of Darkness as an anti-imperialist novel suggesting that "part of its greatness lies in the power of its criticisms of racial prejudice.

He became fascinated with world religions and traditional African cultures and began writing stories as a university student. He was best known for his first novel and magnum opusThings Fall Apart (1958) which is the most widely read book in modern African literature. After graduation he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) and soon moved to the metropolis of Lagos.