This essay places Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman in various comparative contexts. These include the comparison with Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, literary tragedy, and world literature. Setting out the difficulties in teaching African and minority literatures in the Euro-American classroom, the essay details the means by which such problems are negotiated and the ways in which the text is brought alive as a dramatic text that speaks to various themes and ideas.