"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe.

The Effects of Colonization on the Village of Umuofia The coming of the missionaries brings great disruption amongst the village of Umuofia. After thousands of years of unviolated and untouched tribal existence, Okonkwo returns after just seven years of exile to find his village almost unrecognizable. Similarly, his fellow villagers didn't seem to recognize or care to recognize him. Instead, ''the new religion and government and trading stores were very much in the people's eyes …

…expressing and describing white intervention. There was such a clash of cultures involved in the colonization of Nigeria that even the language had to alter to accommodate it. In many cases, this alteration brought about a silencing of native dialects, and a loss of indigenous voice. This is potently reflected towards the close of the novel with Achebe's assertion that ''even now they have not found the mouth with which to tell of their suffering'' (183).