The Unexpected Joy at dawn is set within two West African countries, Nigeria and Ghana. A part of the plot in the book takes place in the suburbs in Lagos in Nigeria and the other one in Accra, Ghana. This refers to the physical location of the novel. No literary text is completely independent of context and society. Each work of fiction is in one way or another affected by the diverse circumstances in society. The Unexpected Joy of Dawn is not an exception. It could easily be categorized as a historical novel due to the fact that it is based on two major historical instances.