Published in 1967, the year the Biafran War began, this collection showcased the future Nobel laureate's (1986) full poetic range. The Yoruba mythological epic "Idanre" meditates on Ogun, god of iron and creativity, while the political poems reckon with Nigeria's civil war. Soyinka fuses modernist technique with Yoruba oral tradition to create a poetry that is both universal and irreducibly African.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.