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A Comprehensive Look at Western Literature

The great Western books read as a conversation Nigerian readers can join: Homer to Morrison, what each work is, why it mattered, how to read it today, and where Nigerian and African writers answered it.

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About this course

From Homer's Odyssey to Toni Morrison's Beloved, this course is a guided tour of the books that shaped literature in European languages, read from Nigeria. Each lesson tells you what a work is, why it mattered, how to read it on a phone today with free, legal texts, and where Nigerian and African writers answered it. You will read Greek epic and tragedy beside Ola Rotimi's The Gods Are Not to Blame, Wole Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides and Femi Osofisan's Tegonni and Women of Owu; meet the Africans who wrote in Latin; travel with Dante and Chaucer and Patience Agbabi's Nigerian 'Wife of Bafa'; read Shakespeare's Othello and The Tempest with Aimé Césaire and a Lagos company's Yoruba Winter's Tale at the Globe; follow the novel from Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe to Olaudah Equiano and Fagunwa; read the Romantics, Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and the modernists who gave Achebe two of his titles; weigh Conrad's Heart of Darkness against Achebe's 1975 lecture and Things Fall Apart; and finish with Orwell, Beckett, Camus and Kamel Daoud, Márquez, Morrison, Okri and Soyinka's Nobel, and a method for building your own paired reading list. Every lesson uses the same five moves for reading a classic, and every lesson has a short narrated documentary told through public-domain portraits, manuscripts, engravings and maps. It is the companion to our Nigerian Literature course. The project is a reading essay that puts one Western work and one Nigerian or African work in conversation. Facts are correct as of November 2026. Free to learn.

Ngozi teaches Literature-in-English at a secondary school in Enugu. One afternoon a student, Tobi, puts up his hand. 'Ma, why do we still read Shakespeare? He never came to Nigeria. Achebe is enough.' A few classmates laugh, but Ngozi takes the question seriously. She remembers that Achebe took the title Things Fall Apart from an Irish poet, that Wole Soyinka rewrote a Greek play for the London stage, and that Femi Osofisan turned another Greek tragedy into a story about Owu. 'Our writers did not ignore those books,' she says. 'They argued with them. You can only join an argument if you know what was said.' This course is for every Tobi: a guided tour of the great Western books as a conversation Nigerian readers can enter, question and answer.

What you'll learn

Course syllabus — 12 lessons

  1. What Western literature is, and how to read a classic15 min
  2. Homer and the epic: war, wandering and the way home16 min
  3. Greek tragedy and its Nigerian rewrites16 min
  4. Rome: Virgil, Ovid and the Africans who wrote in Latin15 min
  5. The Middle Ages: Dante's journey and Chaucer's pilgrims16 min
  6. Shakespeare: the glover's son and the whole world's stage17 min
  7. Cervantes, Don Quixote and the birth of the novel16 min
  8. The Romantics: Wordsworth's daffodils and Mary Shelley's monster16 min
  9. The great 19th-century novel: Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky17 min
  10. Modernism: Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Eliot and a broken world17 min
  11. Empire and its answer: Heart of Darkness and Achebe's reply18 min
  12. From 1945 to now, and building your own reading list18 min

Your project

A Western book and its African answer: a reading essay

One Google Doc link, shared so anyone with the link can view, containing the 1,200 to 1,800-word reading essay with thesis, context, at least six referenced quotations with analysis, conclusion, works cited and the authorship declaration.

Certificates on Skillnaija are earned, not issued for attendance: you submit this project, it is graded against a rubric, and passing issues a certificate anyone can verify. See the full project brief, rubric and free workbook →

Frequently asked questions

Is A Comprehensive Look at Western Literature free?

Yes. A Comprehensive Look at Western Literature is completely free on Skillnaija. You need a free account to open the lessons, and there is no charge for the course, the project, or the certificate.

How long does A Comprehensive Look at Western Literature take to complete?

6 weeks · ~3 hrs/week. There are 12 lessons, about 3 hours of material in total. You learn at your own pace and your progress is saved.

Do I need any experience to start A Comprehensive Look at Western Literature?

Beginner-friendly. You can start from scratch — no prior experience is assumed.

What will I learn in A Comprehensive Look at Western Literature?

You will build practical skills in Reading a classic: context, story, close reading, argument and reply, Homer and the epic, beside African epics, Greek tragedy and its Nigerian rewrites, Virgil, Ovid and the Latin writers of Roman Africa, Dante, Chaucer and the rise of vernacular literature, Reading Shakespeare aloud and in context, The rise of the novel from Cervantes to Equiano, Romanticism, realism and modernism, Postcolonial reading: Conrad, Achebe, Rhys, Salih, Césaire, Daoud, Close reading of short quoted passages in translation, Writing a comparative essay with a thesis and works cited, Finding free, legal texts and building a paired reading list. Every lesson is written for a Nigerian context, with examples drawn from how the work is actually done and paid for here.

Do I get a certificate for A Comprehensive Look at Western Literature?

Yes, but it has to be earned. You complete the course project — A Western book and its African answer: a reading essay and submit it for grading. Passing the project issues a verifiable certificate; finishing the lessons alone does not.

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