The Greatest Books of All Time on Colonialism

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This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 759 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
4083 Death And The King's Horsemen Wole Soyinka 1975 Nigerian English
4099 Le Mauvais Sang Feu De Brousse à Trisse Coeur Tchicaya U. Tam'si 1955 Tchadian French
4141 Le Pauvre Christ De Bomba Mongo Beti 1956 French French
4141 Climbié Bernard Dadié 1956 French French
4141 Le Vieux Nègre Et La Médaille Ferdinand Oyono 1956 French French
4141 Nedjma Kateb Yacine 1956 Algerian French
4206 The Colonizer and the Colonized Albert Memmi 1957 French French
4206 Ghana Kwame Nkrumah 1957 Ghanaian English
4261 Petals of blood Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 1977 Kenyan English
4310 Indiana George Sand 1832 French French
4310 Mister Johnson Joyce Cary 1939 British English
4366 América Hispánica Guillermo Céspedes del Castillo 1983 Peruvian Spanish
4491 Voyage In The Dark Jean Rhys 1934 British English
4495 Soldiers Three Rudyard Kipling 1888 British English
4500 Mister Pip Lloyd Jones 2006 New Zealand English
4557 Os Nacionalismos Africanos Mario de Andrade 1961 Brazilian Portuguese
4605 Babel R. F. Kuang 2022 American English
4664 Dusklands J. M. Coetzee 1974 South African English
4679 Of Love And Other Demons Gabriel García Márquez 1994 Colombian Spanish
4722 The Bride Price Buchi Emecheta 1976 Nigerian English
4740 At Play in the Fields of the Lord Peter Matthiessen 1965 American English
4743 The Commandant Jessica Anderson 1975 Australian English
4746 Nos Matamos O Cão Tinhoso Bernardo Honwana 1964 Mozambican Portuguese
4746 Oeuvre Poétique Léopold Sédar Senghor 1964 Senegalese French
4804 Dictee Theresa Hak Kyung Cha 1982 American English
4857 Der Tod Im Reisfeld Peter Scholl-Latour 1970 German German
4873 Heat and Dust Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 1975 Indian English
4879 The Wound Malick Fall 1967 Senegalese French
4890 The Book of Salt Monique Truong 2003 American English
4900 The River War Winston Churchill 1899 British English
4995 Utenzi Wa Vita Vya Uhuru Robert Bin Shabaan 1967 Tanzanian Swahili
5095 The Suns of Independence Ahmadou Kourouma 1968 French French
5162 Die Söhne Der Großen Bärin Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich 1951 German German
5186 The Struggle For Mozambique Eduardo Mondlane 1969 Mozambican English
5237 Holder of the World Bharati Mukherjee 1993 Indian English
5242 Concierto Barroco Alejo Carpentier 1974 Cuban Spanish
5279 The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling Angus Wilson 1977 British English
5315 Abu Telfan, Return from the Mountains of the Moon Wilhelm Karl Raabe 1867 German German
5360 The Treaty Of Waitangi Claudia Orange 1987 New Zealand English
5384 Histoire De L'afrique Noire Joseph Ki-Zerbo 1972 French French
5405 Our Sister Killjoy Ama Ata Aidoo 1977 Ghanaian English
5427 At Night All Blood Is Black David Diop 2018 French French
5469 L'étrange Destin De Wangrin Amadou Hampâté Bâ 1973 French French
5520 Nós Os Do Makulusu José Luandino Vieira 1974 Angolan Portuguese
5668 Le Polygone Etoile Kateb Yacine 1961 French French
5691 Sur La Philosophie Africaine Paulin Hountondji 1976 French French
5863 France And England In North America Francis Parkman 1865 American English
5918 A Guest Of Honour Nadine Gordimer 1970 South African English
5955 A Good Man In Africa William Boyd 1981 British English
5972 The Life Of Ismail Ferik Pasha Rea Galanaki 1989 Greek Greek
5998 Paradise Abdulrazak Gurnah 1994 British English
6005 A Woman Named Solitude André Schwarz-Bart 1972 French French
6005 Bound To Violence Yambo Ouologuem 1968 Malian French
6089 An Ice Cream War William Boyd 1982 British English
6102 Unity And Struggle Amilcar Cabral 1979 Guinean Portuguese
6129 Three Day Road Joseph Boyden 2005 Canadian English
6152 The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet David Mitchell 2010 British English
6174 Ludo Conrad Detrez 1974 Belgian French
6190 Guerrillas V. S. Naipaul 1975 Trinidadian English
6206 A Geração Da Utopia Pepetela 1992 Angolan Portuguese
6230 Song Of Ocol Okot P'Bitek 1970 Ugandan Acholi
6304 Les Lieux De Marguerite Duras Marguerite Duras 1977 French French
6327 The Day Of Creation J. G. Ballard 1987 British English
6343 Another Country Karel Schoeman 1984 South African Afrikaans
6351 Karingana Ua Karingana José Craveirinha 1982 Mozambican Portuguese
6438 History Of The Conquest Of Mexico William H. Prescott 1843 American English
6447 The Bridge Of Beyond Simone Schwarz-Bart 1972 French French
6455 The Arrivants Kamau Brathwaite 1973 Barbadian English
6467 The Overseer's Cabin Edouard Glissant 1981 French French
6472 Anthills Of The Savannah Chinua Achebe 1987 Nigerian English
6504 Hope Leslie; Or, Early Times In The Massachusetts Catharine Maria Sedgwick 1827 American English
6508 Indigo Marina Warner 1992 British English
6622 Purple Hibiscus Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2003 Nigerian English
6623 Disappearance David Dabydeen 1993 Guyanese English
6710 The Old Drift Namwali Serpell 2019 Zambian English
6717 Beat Not The Bones Charlotte Jay 1952 Australian English
6763 Citizen And Subject Mahmood Mamdani 1996 Ugandan English
6792 La Tejedora De Coronas Germán Espinosa 1982 Colombian Spanish
6855 Ualalapi Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa 1987 Mozambican Portuguese
6855 Male Daughters, Female Husbands Ifi Amadiume 1987 Nigerian English
6895 O Guarani José de Alencar 1857 Brazilian Portuguese
6907 The Years of Rice and Salt Kim Stanley Robinson 2002 American English
6922 Necropolitics Achille Mbembe 2003 French French
6926 The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine Rashid Khalidi 2020 American English
6951 Bones Chenjerai Hove 1988 Zimbabwean English
6951 The Invention Of Africa V. Y. Mudimbe 1988 Congolese English
7130 Beauty Is A Wound Eka Kurniawan 2002 Indonesian Indonesian
7155 This Earth Of Mankind Pramoedya Ananta Toer 1975 Indonesian Indonesian
7178 The Last Harmattan Of Alusine Dunbar Syl Cheney-Choker 1990 Sierra Leonean English
7216 The Royal Way Andre Malraux 1930 French French
7216 Collected Stories Rudyard Kipling 1941 British English
7216 Complete Verse Rudyard Kipling 1940 British English
7216 The Spider's House Paul Bowles 1955 American English
7577 The Racial Contract Charles W. Mills 1997 American English
7612 Poems Of Léopold S. Senghor Léopold S. Senghor 1945 Senegalese French
7622 Dropbear Evelyn Araluen 2021 Australian English
7656 Collected Poetry Aimé Césaire 1946 French French
7714 We Were Not The Savages Daniel N. Paul 1993 Canadian English
7796 In My Father's House Anthony Appiah 1992 Ghanaian English
7820 Men Of Maize Miguel Angel Asturias 1949 Guatemalan Spanish
7883 Mexican Gothic Silvia Moreno-Garcia 2020 Mexican English
7967 Mountolive Lawrence Durrell 1958 British English
7992 Viva O Povo Brasileiro João Ubaldo Ribeiro 1984 Brazilian Portuguese
8032 An Area Of Darkness V. S. Naipaul 1964 British English
8061 The Anarchy William Dalrymple 2019 British English
8076 The Map Of Love Ahdaf Soueif 1999 Egyptian English
8076 The White Nile Alan Moorehead 1960 British English
8103 I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem Maryse Condé 1986 Guadeloupean French
8107 American Indian Stories Zitkala-Sa 1921 American English
8107 Coonardoo Katherine Susannah Prichard 1929 Australian English
8107 Letters Of A Javanese Princess Raden Adjeng Kartini 1911 Indonesian Dutch
8107 The Moccasin Maker E. Pauline Johnson 1913 Canadian English
8107 Ramona Helen Hunt Jackson 1884 American English
8234 Beyond The Mask, Race, Gender And Identity Amina Mama 1995 British English
8300 Khwabnama Akhtaruzzaman Elias 1996 Bangladeshi Bengali
8314 Vigilia Del Almirante Augusto Roa Bastos 1992 Paraguayan Spanish
8353 River Thieves Michael Crummey 2001 Canadian English
8376 The Seed Is Mine Charles Van Onselen 1996 South African English
8374 Beyond A Boundary C. L. R. James 1963 British English
8404 The Art Of Losing Alice Zeniter 2017 French French