Since the 1980s, numerous novelists, dramatists, and poets have been marketed as

postcolonial writers. But what is postcolonial literature? In the broadest terms, this
category includes works that have a relationship to the subjugating forces of imperialism
and colonial expansion. In short, postcolonial literature is that which has arisen primarily
since the end of World War II from regions of the world undergoing decolonization. Works
from such regions in the 20th and 21st centuries, such as the Indian subcontinent, Nigeria,
South Africa, and numerous parts of the Caribbean, for example, might be described as
postcolonial.

The Rise of Postcolonial Theory

In order to understand the rising attention to

postcolonial fiction, a basic understanding of
postcolonial theory is necessary. Keep in mind, this is a
very short history and is by no means all-inclusive! If
you’re interested in postcolonial theory, you might start
with some of the writers we’re about to discuss before
moving onto your own explorations of the topic.

In 1961, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth was

published in French. Arising out of the Algerian struggle
for independence from France, the text examined
possibilities for anti-colonial violence in the region and
elsewhere. Fanon was a Martinique-born intellectual
who was also a member of the Algerian National
Liberation Front, and his writings have inspired
numerous people across the globe in struggles for
freedom from oppression and racially motivated
violence. If you’re particularly interested in Fanon as a collector, you might seek out first
editions of Fanon’s work. Grove Press published the first U.S. edition of The Wretched of
the Earth in 1963, with a translated forward by Jean-Paul Sartre.

By 1979, Edward Said had written Orientalism, a text examining the relationship between
those in the West and the “Other” in the East. This work has become a staple in
postcolonial courses, and it helped to expand the field over the last few decades. Said was a
Palestinian-American scholar who taught at Columbia University for the majority of his
academic career. Other important early thinkers in postcolonial theory, just to name a
couple, include Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Homi Bhabha.

Early Postcolonial Writers of Imaginative Literature

While the field of postcolonial studies only
began taking shape in the late 1970s and early
1980s, numerous fiction writers began
publishing works in the decades immediately
following World War II. One of the most
significant postcolonial novels to emerge in this
period was Chinua Achebe’sThings Fall
Apart (1958). This novel now graces many
Anglophone fiction course syllabi, which isn’t a
surprise given its enormous popularity and
importance when it first was published.

Published in the late 1950s, Achebe wrote the

book at the end of the British colonial period in Nigeria but depicted an earlier moment in
Nigerian history. The novel tells the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo village leader in the late
19th century who must witness the tragic demise of his culture at the hands of
colonialism. Nigeria remained a British colony until 1960. If you’re interested in adding
one of Achebe’s works to your collection, you might look for a first U.K. edition of Things
Fall Apart, published by William Heinemann Ltd. in 1958, or a first American edition
published a year later in New York by McDowell Obolensky.

Even before Chinua Achebe published Things Fall

Apart, Nadine Gordimer had already written one book and
several short-story collections, and she was in the process of
publishing her second novel. A South African writer of
Eastern European origin, Gordimer didn’t personally
experience the racial discrimination and violence that arose
from decolonization and the institution of apartheid, but she
nonetheless spent her career advocating for equal rights in
her country. Some of her most notable works that deal with
postcolonial politics and the stark harms of apartheid
include The Conservationist (1974), Burger’s
Daughter (1979), and July’s People (1981). A signed copy of
one of Gordimer’s works would make a fantastic edition to
any postcolonial literature collection.

Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (1966) is

another significant and early work of postcolonial fiction. A
bildungsroman of sorts, Salih’s novel follows an unnamed
protagonist as he returns to his Sudanese village after years
of education abroad in England only to learn of the devastating effects of imperialism. The
novel was originally written in Arabic, and it was published in English for the first time in
1969.

When it comes to plays, Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain (1970) helped to set
the world stage for postcolonial dramatists. A writer from Saint Lucia, Walcott’s works
frequently depict the colonial harms of the West Indies. Indeed, his plays, as well as his
poems, encourage his readers to question the history and politics of the Caribbean, and its
role as a postcolonial site through which we might renegotiate remedies for imperialism.

Stay tuned for Part II of our brief history of postcolonial literatue, in which we'll explore
contemporary writers who detail the postcolonial condition.
In Part I of our exploration of the history of Postcolonial literature, we focused on the rise
of postcolonial theory and early postcolonial writers, such as Chinua Achebe and Nadine
Gordimer, who set the stage for the international genre with their imaginative literature.
Today, we shift our emphasis to contemporary writers of the postcolonial condition.

Since writers like Achebe, Gordimer, Tayeb Salih, and Derek

Walcott laid the groundwork for the global circulation of
postcolonial fiction, numerous writers from across the world
have begun publishing novels, plays, and collections of poetry
that speak to the injuries of colonial violence. From the
Indian subcontinent, a number of young and notable
novelists have depicted the destructive force of the 1947
India-Pakistan Partition and the Caste System in the region
through their works. Examples include Salman
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), Amitav Ghosh’s The
Shadow Lines (1988), Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India (1991),
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), and Manju
Kapur’s Difficult Daughters (1998).

In addition to novels pertaining to the India-Pakistan

Partition, which occurred as a result of British
decolonization, Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry collections have
been extremely influential. The poet was born in New Delhi in 1949, just a couple of years
after Partition. He was raised in Kashmir and attended university there before moving to
the United States. According to Bruce King, Agha Shahid Ali’s poems contain “obsessions
with . . . memory, death, history, family ancestors, nostalgia for a past he never knew,
dreams, Hindu ceremonies, friendships, and self-consciousness about being a poet.” His
collection A Walk Through the Yellow Pages (1987) garnered international acclaim,
while The Country Without a Post Office (1997) directly contended with lingering colonial
harms on the subcontinent.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Returning to Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work is some of the most recent to deal
with the aftermath of imperialism in West Africa. If you’re just learning about Adichie’s
work, we recommend starting with her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), or her second
work, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), which deals with the aftermath of decolonization and
the Biafran War.

The world of postcolonial literature is broad and ever-expanding. We’ve only scratched the
surface of the fiction, poetry, and drama that falls into this broad field. When you pick up
such a work of fiction, you might ask yourself some questions. How does the work seek to
revise the harmful colonial history of the region? Does it provide new ways of seeing the
world? Does it allow us, as readers, to reimagine colonial spaces? If you’re interested in
fiction that deals specifically with the politics of imperialism, colonialism, and
decolonization in the 20th century, we suggest beginning with some of the texts we’ve
discussed while always exploring new possibilities. This is a field of literary studies that is
still being written, and you, as a reader, can play an important role in helping to shape it.