Decolonization
Exposé of British colonial exploitation across Africa.
History of the Haitian Revolution led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, the only successful slave revolt that led to the founding of an independent state.
Ethnographic study of the Gikuyu people written by Kenya's future first president, defending traditional African social structures against colonial disruption.
Analysis of colonialism and democracy arguing that democracy cannot coexist with imperialism.
Official record of the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress that launched African independence movements.
A satirical utopian fable set in the imaginary kingdom of Kusadikika, where a council debates whether to allow citizens to study abroad, a prescient allegory about colonialism, education, and African self-determination.
Padmore's analysis of Pan-Africanism as alternative to Communism for African liberation.
Told through the diary of Toundi, a young Cameroonian who serves French colonial officials and witnesses their hypocrisy, cruelty, and moral corruption. A devastating ironic exposé of colonialism.
Lectures on colonialism, racism, and the psychology of oppression delivered in Europe.
The story of Obi Okonkwo, grandson of Okonkwo from Things Fall Apart, who returns to Nigeria after studying in England and faces corruption in the civil service during the 1950s approaching independence.
Fiery speech delivered at Congo's independence ceremony denouncing Belgian colonial brutality and asserting African dignity, shocking King Baudouin.
Set in San Cristobal, a fictional Caribbean island at independence. Fola, a middle-class woman, attends a Vodun ceremony and is transformed, setting off events that culminate in revolution.
A seminal work on decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization, arguing that decolonization is inherently violent and analyzing the role of class, race, and culture in liberation movements.
A factory worker is arrested and tortured by the PIDE secret police for nationalist activities. Written from prison, it tells of his wife's search through Luanda's musseques, the first great anti-colonial novel of Angolan literature.
Posthumous collection of political essays on Algeria, Africa, and decolonization.
A group of young Nigerian intellectuals — engineers, journalists, academics — navigate a corrupt post-independence Lagos, trying to find meaning. Soyinka's dense, allusive prose draws on Yoruba mythology.
Collection of speeches and writings on African socialism and Tanzanian independence.
Manifesto defining Black Power as political and economic self-determination for Black communities.
Set in the days before Kenyan independence, several villagers prepare for Uhuru Day celebrations while haunted by their choices during the Mau Mau uprising. Ngũgĩ's most technically accomplished novel.
An unnamed railway clerk in Ghana struggles to maintain his integrity in the face of pervasive corruption following independence, exploring disillusionment with post-colonial governments.
Former Malinke king Fama is stripped of his power and dignity after independence, wandering through a post-colonial Africa that has betrayed its people. Kourouma revolutionized French prose with African syntax.
Alternative edition note — Kourouma's novel about the deposed Malinke king Fama, whose world was destroyed by independence. Published first in Canada, then France after initial rejection.
Cabral's analysis of Guinea-Bissau's liberation struggle against Portuguese colonialism.
Comprehensive history of the Caribbean from colonization to modern independence movements.
Baako returns from studying in America full of idealism, but his family and a society consumed by materialism destroy him. Armah's second novel, even darker than his debut.
An experimental 'prose poem' following attorney Amamu through a day in his life, blending standard narrative with symbol-laden mystical journey exploring post-independence Ghana.
Collected poems of Okigbo published posthumously, blending African indigenous culture, Igbo mythology with ancient Greek and Roman influences.
The story of two Black women friends in Ohio whose lives take vastly different paths, exploring good and evil, community, and independence.
El Hadji Abdou Kader Bèye, a Senegalese businessman who takes a third wife, discovers he has been struck with xala — impotence. A satirical allegory of the African bourgeoisie's complicity with neo-colonialism.
Collection of poems written during Portuguese colonial rule expressing longing for freedom and Angolan identity, becoming anthems of the independence movement.
A sweeping political novel set in colonial Cameroon, following generations united by the memory of the assassinated independence leader Ruben Um Nyobe, as they resist the collusion between France and the new African elite.
Set in a Trinidadian yard in the years before and after independence, the novel follows the people of Calvary Hill as they celebrate Carnival — Aldrick the Dragon Man, Fisheye, Sylvia — and the limits of rebellion.
Novel set during Angola's war of independence, following MPLA guerrilla fighters in the Mayombe forest, exploring tribalism, racism, and revolutionary ideals.
Nine stories and an essay about Algerian women before and after independence, exploring how women were promised liberation by the revolution and then confined again. Named for Delacroix's famous painting.
Essays on the politics of language in African literature, arguing that African writers should write in African languages to decolonize their minds.
A freedom fighter who buried his weapons after independence emerges from the forest to find Kenya's post-independence society as unjust as colonialism. The Kenyan government issued a warrant for Matigari's arrest, not realizing he was fictional.
A multigenerational story of three Grenadian women spanning the colonial era, independence, and the 1979 Grenadian Revolution. Collins, who participated in the revolution herself, writes with insider political passion and communal voice.
Searing essay critiquing colonialism's legacy, tourism, and corruption in post-independence Antigua.
A gunny sack of family memories anchors Salim's journey through the history of Tanzania's Asian community — from the slave trade era through independence. Vassanji's debut novel.
Young woman from Antigua works as au pair in American city, confronting colonialism and independence.
Sankara's speeches on women's emancipation as essential to revolutionary transformation.
A love story set against Algeria's struggle for independence and its troubled aftermath. The first Arabic novel to be written by an Algerian woman, it became the bestselling Arabic novel of its time.
A multigenerational saga following four generations of a Luo family from pre-colonial Kenya through colonialism and independence to the AIDS crisis. Traces African women's strength across a century of change.
A multigenerational saga spanning from pre-colonial Angola through independence, following a family haunted by Kianda, the water spirit of Luanda's lagoon, as the lagoon is drained to build a market, an allegory for what was sacrificed in the name of progress.
The ghost of a 100-year-old man investigates a murder inside a colonial fortress repurposed as a nursing home in post-independence Mozambique, a haunting meditation on memory, justice, and the inescapable presence of history.
A griot narrates the fictional dictator Koyaga's rise from village hunter to president-for-life in a thinly veiled West African republic, weaving real atrocities of the independence era into satirical mythology.
An epic novel following Mugezi from his birth in Amin's Uganda through Obote's terror and into exile in the Netherlands. Originally written in Dutch by Isegawa, a Ugandan living in Amsterdam.
Third in the Azaro trilogy, following the spirit child and his family to the moment of Nigerian independence. The personal and mythic are inseparable as Nigeria struggles to be born.
The complete poems of Aimé Césaire, including Notebook of a Return to the Native Land and the later lyrics. Césaire co-founded Negritude and served as mayor of Fort-de-France for 56 years.
Essay interrogating how Western humanism excluded colonized peoples from the category of 'human'.
Vikram Lall, an Asian Kenyan, narrates his family's history through Kenya's independence and its descent into corruption, placed between Black, white, and Asian communities — belonging fully to none.
Ngũgĩ's argument that the dismemberment of Africa — cultural, linguistic, psychological — requires a counter-practice of 're-membering' through African languages and pan-Africanism.
Collection of essays connecting Ferguson, Palestine, and global freedom struggles.
Second in the Wormwood Trilogy, expanding the alien biodome world as Rosewater declares independence from Nigeria. An increasingly complex examination of consciousness, identity, and alien intervention.