Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation is a 1911 book by J. E. Casely Hayford that is one of the first novels in English by an African writer and has been cited as the earliest pan-African fiction. It was first published by C. M. Philips in London. It has been described as "one of the most important contributions to the literature on African nationalism", which made a plea for a unified African nation. Background Set in both Africa and England, Ethiopia Unbound relies on philosophical debates between an African and his English friend, as well as references to contemporary African events and ancient African history, to provide a context for its exploration of African identity and the struggle for emancipation. Reception The book's reception on its initial publication ranged from comments in a letter from pan-Africanist Edward Wilmot Blyden — "The more I read 'Ethiopia Unbound', the more I see that it is not your book, but an inspiration. It has given me more joy and encouragement than anything I have seen for many years" — to a review in the New York Independent Weekly Magazine of 26 October 1911, describing it as "a volume in the guise of a story, which is but a disguise to set forth the way our Christian civilisation and our Anglo-Saxon arrogance appear to a black native of the Gold Coast of Africa ... who looks forward to seeing Africa belong to the Africans rather than to the Europeans who have partitioned it. The book is worth reading." The Pittsburgh Courier reviewer said: "It is a serious book, written in a happy, hopeful vein, and discusses with masterful ability, keen logic and philosophical reasoning the great world question—the relation of the darker races to the dominant races and the cause of the impotence and helplessness of the latter. The author points out a way which he thinks will have the effect of begetting more consideration and respect for those dark races, which are being used as shuttle-cocks by the dominant, grasping, greedy nations of the world. 'Ethiopia Unbound' is a remarkable book." As described by The National Watchman (Topeka, Kansas): "Mr. Hayford weaves romance, poetry, history, modern Christianity, the evolution of race persecution and recent striving into a plea for fidelity to racial ideals which will bring about the freedom of which he prophesies when Ethiopia unbound will be a reality. Decades after the