Heart of Darkness

Achebe's direct response — the colonial encounter told from the Nigerian side. Okonkwo sees what Kurtz represents from the other end of the gun.

Golding cited Conrad as primary influence. Kurtz's regression is tested in miniature — schoolboys become savages faster than their civilization can imagine.

Conrad's own longer treatment of imperialism — this time in South America, with silver as the corrupting commodity instead of ivory. More complex, less concentrated.

Conrad's other masterwork — the darkness moves from colonial Africa to London's political underground. Same moral framework, urban setting.

Another examination of the colonial encounter, this time in British India. Forster is more liberal and more optimistic than Conrad, but confronts the same impossibility of genuine cross-cultural understanding under imperial conditions.

Greene's debt to Conrad is explicit — the Marlow-narrator watching idealism curdle into atrocity, this time in Vietnam in the 1950s. The 'well-meaning American' as a new Kurtz.