Joyce Cary: the clash of cultures in Nigeria

Abstract

Joyce Cary’s interests in Nigeria are very different from Lawrence’s interests in Mexico, and his life was very different, too. Lawrence was never a colonial employee, but Cary entered the British Political Service and he served in Nigeria from 1913 to 1919. He published his first novel, Aissa Saved, only in 1932, about 13 years after he left Nigeria, but it was to Nigeria that he had turned for his themes. Indeed, his Nigerian experiences provided the stimulus for almost the entire first phase of his career as a novelist. Aissa Saved was quickly followed by An American Visitor (1933) and The African Witch (1936). In his next novel, Castle Corner (1938), he turns away from Africa for the most part, but Mister Johnson (1939) marks a complete return. His Nigerian novels and the Nigerian side of Castle Corner form a distinctive body of work.

We cannot hope to leave this difficult question in a spirit of easy optimism. It is useless to pretend that there is not a conflict of principles in Africa today.

Margery Perham, ‘Future Relations of Black and White in Africa’, in The Listener, 28 March 1934.