The intermixed narrative strategies radically changed assumptions about what African novels should include.
The story describes the pain of Awoonor's voluntary exile and his spiritual return to his native land.
[3] Academic Kwame Ayivor describes the novel as a fictional representation of the mythology and worldview of the Ewe people.
[4] Ayivor describes the style of using this material, as very similar to Ayi Kwei Armah's The Healers (1979).
[4] In an orbituary for Awoonor, Ghanaian-British writer Nii Ayikwei Parkes called the novel "wonderfully musical prose, its immersion in Accra's history, its obvious confidence in its place in the world, made me go to my father and ask about the other uncle.