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
4082 Death And The King's Horsemen Wole Soyinka 1975 Nigerian English
4098 Le Mauvais Sang Feu De Brousse à Trisse Coeur Tchicaya U. Tam'si 1955 Tchadian French
4140 Le Pauvre Christ De Bomba Mongo Beti 1956 French French
4140 Climbié Bernard Dadié 1956 French French
4140 Le Vieux Nègre Et La Médaille Ferdinand Oyono 1956 French French
4140 Nedjma Kateb Yacine 1956 Algerian French
4205 The Colonizer and the Colonized Albert Memmi 1957 French French
4205 Ghana Kwame Nkrumah 1957 Ghanaian English
4260 Petals of blood Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 1977 Kenyan English
4309 Indiana George Sand 1832 French French
4309 Mister Johnson Joyce Cary 1939 British English
4365 América Hispánica Guillermo Céspedes del Castillo 1983 Peruvian Spanish
4489 Voyage In The Dark Jean Rhys 1934 British English
4494 Soldiers Three Rudyard Kipling 1888 British English
4499 Mister Pip Lloyd Jones 2006 New Zealand English
4556 Os Nacionalismos Africanos Mario de Andrade 1961 Brazilian Portuguese
4604 Babel R. F. Kuang 2022 American English
4663 Dusklands J. M. Coetzee 1974 South African English
4678 Of Love And Other Demons Gabriel García Márquez 1994 Colombian Spanish
4721 The Bride Price Buchi Emecheta 1976 Nigerian English
4739 At Play in the Fields of the Lord Peter Matthiessen 1965 American English
4742 The Commandant Jessica Anderson 1975 Australian English
4745 Nos Matamos O Cão Tinhoso Bernardo Honwana 1964 Mozambican Portuguese
4745 Oeuvre Poétique Léopold Sédar Senghor 1964 Senegalese French
4803 Dictee Theresa Hak Kyung Cha 1982 American English
4856 Der Tod Im Reisfeld Peter Scholl-Latour 1970 German German
4872 Heat and Dust Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 1975 Indian English
4878 The Wound Malick Fall 1967 Senegalese French
4889 The Book of Salt Monique Truong 2003 American English
4899 The River War Winston Churchill 1899 British English
4992 Utenzi Wa Vita Vya Uhuru Robert Bin Shabaan 1967 Tanzanian Swahili
5093 The Suns of Independence Ahmadou Kourouma 1968 French French
5160 Die Söhne Der Großen Bärin Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich 1951 German German
5184 The Struggle For Mozambique Eduardo Mondlane 1969 Mozambican English
5236 Holder of the World Bharati Mukherjee 1993 Indian English
5241 Concierto Barroco Alejo Carpentier 1974 Cuban Spanish
5278 The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling Angus Wilson 1977 British English
5314 Abu Telfan, Return from the Mountains of the Moon Wilhelm Karl Raabe 1867 German German
5359 The Treaty Of Waitangi Claudia Orange 1987 New Zealand English
5382 Histoire De L'afrique Noire Joseph Ki-Zerbo 1972 French French
5403 Our Sister Killjoy Ama Ata Aidoo 1977 Ghanaian English
5425 At Night All Blood Is Black David Diop 2018 French French
5467 L'étrange Destin De Wangrin Amadou Hampâté Bâ 1973 French French
5518 Nós Os Do Makulusu José Luandino Vieira 1974 Angolan Portuguese
5665 Le Polygone Etoile Kateb Yacine 1961 French French
5688 Sur La Philosophie Africaine Paulin Hountondji 1976 French French
5860 France And England In North America Francis Parkman 1865 American English
5915 A Guest Of Honour Nadine Gordimer 1970 South African English
5951 A Good Man In Africa William Boyd 1981 British English
5968 The Life Of Ismail Ferik Pasha Rea Galanaki 1989 Greek Greek
5994 Paradise Abdulrazak Gurnah 1994 British English
6002 A Woman Named Solitude André Schwarz-Bart 1972 French French
6002 Bound To Violence Yambo Ouologuem 1968 Malian French
6086 An Ice Cream War William Boyd 1982 British English
6099 Unity And Struggle Amilcar Cabral 1979 Guinean Portuguese
6126 Three Day Road Joseph Boyden 2005 Canadian English
6149 The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet David Mitchell 2010 British English
6171 Ludo Conrad Detrez 1974 Belgian French
6186 Guerrillas V. S. Naipaul 1975 Trinidadian English
6202 A Geração Da Utopia Pepetela 1992 Angolan Portuguese
6226 Song Of Ocol Okot P'Bitek 1970 Ugandan Acholi
6301 Les Lieux De Marguerite Duras Marguerite Duras 1977 French French
6324 The Day Of Creation J. G. Ballard 1987 British English
6340 Another Country Karel Schoeman 1984 South African Afrikaans
6348 Karingana Ua Karingana José Craveirinha 1982 Mozambican Portuguese
6435 History Of The Conquest Of Mexico William H. Prescott 1843 American English
6444 The Bridge Of Beyond Simone Schwarz-Bart 1972 French French
6453 The Arrivants Kamau Brathwaite 1973 Barbadian English
6465 The Overseer's Cabin Edouard Glissant 1981 French French
6470 Anthills Of The Savannah Chinua Achebe 1987 Nigerian English
6502 Hope Leslie; Or, Early Times In The Massachusetts Catharine Maria Sedgwick 1827 American English
6506 Indigo Marina Warner 1992 British English
6620 Purple Hibiscus Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2003 Nigerian English
6621 Disappearance David Dabydeen 1993 Guyanese English
6709 The Old Drift Namwali Serpell 2019 Zambian English
6716 Beat Not The Bones Charlotte Jay 1952 Australian English
6762 Citizen And Subject Mahmood Mamdani 1996 Ugandan English
6791 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
7177 The Last Harmattan Of Alusine Dunbar Syl Cheney-Choker 1990 Sierra Leonean English
7215 The Royal Way Andre Malraux 1930 French French
7215 Collected Stories Rudyard Kipling 1941 British English
7215 Complete Verse Rudyard Kipling 1940 British English
7215 The Spider's House Paul Bowles 1955 American English
7576 The Racial Contract Charles W. Mills 1997 American English
7611 Poems Of Léopold S. Senghor Léopold S. Senghor 1945 Senegalese French
7621 Dropbear Evelyn Araluen 2021 Australian English
7655 Collected Poetry Aimé Césaire 1946 French French
7712 We Were Not The Savages Daniel N. Paul 1993 Canadian English
7794 In My Father's House Anthony Appiah 1992 Ghanaian English
7819 Men Of Maize Miguel Angel Asturias 1949 Guatemalan Spanish
7882 Mexican Gothic Silvia Moreno-Garcia 2020 Mexican English
7966 Mountolive Lawrence Durrell 1958 British English
7991 Viva O Povo Brasileiro João Ubaldo Ribeiro 1984 Brazilian Portuguese
8031 An Area Of Darkness V. S. Naipaul 1964 British English
8060 The Anarchy William Dalrymple 2019 British English
8075 The Map Of Love Ahdaf Soueif 1999 Egyptian English
8075 The White Nile Alan Moorehead 1960 British English
8101 I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem Maryse Condé 1986 Guadeloupean French
8105 American Indian Stories Zitkala-Sa 1921 American English
8105 Coonardoo Katherine Susannah Prichard 1929 Australian English
8105 Letters Of A Javanese Princess Raden Adjeng Kartini 1911 Indonesian Dutch
8105 The Moccasin Maker E. Pauline Johnson 1913 Canadian English
8105 Ramona Helen Hunt Jackson 1884 American English
8232 Beyond The Mask, Race, Gender And Identity Amina Mama 1995 British English
8298 Khwabnama Akhtaruzzaman Elias 1996 Bangladeshi Bengali
8312 Vigilia Del Almirante Augusto Roa Bastos 1992 Paraguayan Spanish
8351 River Thieves Michael Crummey 2001 Canadian English
8373 The Seed Is Mine Charles Van Onselen 1996 South African English
8371 Beyond A Boundary C. L. R. James 1963 British English
8401 The Art Of Losing Alice Zeniter 2017 French French