The relationship between modernist and postcolonial literature has been theorised by critics in Britain, Europe and America since the late 1980s. For the first time, in this book these debates move to Africa.

The first international conference on the works of Joseph Conrad ever held in Africa took place in 1998, to mark the centenary of the publication of Heart of Darkness. This book draws its title from Conrad's short story, `An Outpost of Progress' which represented the responses of a European to settled European assumptions about progress and backwardness, in the light of his first-hand experience of what Europeans were doing in Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. The 13 essays in this collection engage directly with the ways in which Conrad's fiction explores and problematises the notion of `progress', not only at the time when he was writing but now, more than a century later.