Postcolonial literature (less often spelled "Post-colonial literature", sometimes called "New English Literature(s)") is literature concerned with the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated in colonial empires, and the literary expression of postcolonialism. Old book bindings at the Merton College library. ... In general, the word colonial means of or relating to a colony. In United States history, the term Colonial is used to refer to the period before US independence. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Postcolonial literary critics re-examine classic literature with a particular focus on the social "discourse" that shaped it. For instance, in Orientalism, Edward Said analyzes the works of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire and Lautréamont, exploring how they were influenced by and helped to shape a societal fantasy of European racial superiority. Postcolonial fictional writers interact with the traditional colonial discourse, but modify or subvert it; for instance by retelling a familiar story from the perspective of an oppressed minor character in the story, for example Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which was written as a pseudo-prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Often the protagonist of a postcolonial work will find him/herself in a struggle to establish an identity, feeling conflicted between an old, native world that is being abolished by the invasive forces of modernity and/or the new dominant culture. Discourse is a term used in semantics as in discourse analysis, but it also refers to a social conception of discourse, often linked with the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Jürgen Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action (1985). ... Edward Wadie Saïd, Arabic: , , (1 November 1935 – 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and outspoken Palestinian activist. ... “Balzac” redirects here. ... “Baudelaire” redirects here. ... Comte de Lautréamont is a pseudonym for Isidore Lucien Ducasse (Montevideo, Uruguay, April 4, 1846 - Paris, November 24, 1870), a French poet and writer. ... Jean Rhys (August 24, 1890 - May 14, 1979), originally Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a Caribbean novelist who wrote in the mid 20th century. ... A prequel is a work that portrays events which include the structure, conventions, and/or characters of a previously completed narrative, but occur at an earlier time. ... Charlotte Brontë (IPA: ) (April 21, 1816 – March 31, 1855) was an English novelist and the eldest of the three Brontë sisters whose novels have become timeless pieces of English literature. ... This article is about the Victorian novel. ...

Postcolonial literature uses a wide range of terms, like "writing back", re-writing and re-reading, which describe the interpretation of well-known literature under the perspective of the formerly colonized. In Wide Sargasso Sea, the protagonist is renamed several times, and exploited in several ways. Other authors use different analogies for the colonized, but also very different approaches. Ayi Kwei Armah in "Two Thousand seasons" establishes a history for Africa.

Notable authors

• Chinua Achebe
• Akin Adesokan
• Meena Alexander
• Isabel Allende
• Margaret Atwood
• Mariama Ba
• Sebastian Barry
• Eavan Boland
• Dionne Brand
• Michelle Cliff
• J.M. Coetzee
• Maryse Condé
• Hamid Dabashi
• Cyril Dabydeen
• Tsitsi Dangarembga
• Raywat Deonandan
• Anita Desai
• Anne Devlin
• Assia Djebar
• Buchi Emecheta
• Martin Espada
• Frantz Fanon
• Brian Friel
• Athol Fugard
• Zulfikar Ghose
• Amitav Ghosh
• Edouard Glissant
• Nadine Gordimer
• Patricia Grace
• Mohsin Hamid
• Bonny Hicks
• Keri Hulme
• Kazuo Ishiguro
• C.L.R. James
• James Joyce
• Farida Karodia
• Jamaica Kincaid
• Ahmadou Kourouma
• Hanif Kureishi
• Jhumpa Lahiri
• Camara Lay
• Doris Lessing
• Earl Lovelace
• Sharon Maas
• Jorge Majfud
• Dambudzo Marechera
• Kamala Markandaya
• Gabriel García Márquez
• Yann Martel
• Rohinton Mistry
• Bharati Mukherjee
• V. S. Naipaul
• R. K. Narayan
• Michael Ondaatje
• Sasenarine Persaud
• A. K. Ramanujan
• Jean Rhys
• Arundhati Roy
• Salman Rushdie
• Shyam Selvadurai
• Sam Selvon
• Léopold Sedar Senghor
• Bapsi Sidhwa
• Wilbur Smith
• Zadie Smith
• Wole Soyinka
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
• Pramoedya Ananta Toer
• Khal Torabully
• Yvonne Vera
• Derek Walcott
• Kath Walker

Chinua Achebe (born November 16, 1930) is a Nigerian novelist and poet, an esteemed and controversial literary critic, and one of the most widely read authors of the 20th century. ... Meena Alexander, born Mary Elizabeth Alexander, is an Indian poet. ... For the Chilean politician and daughter of Salvador Allende, see Isabel Allende Bussi. ... Margaret Eleanor Atwood, OC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian writer. ... Mariama Ba (1929-1981) was a Senegalese author and feminist, who wrote in French. ... Sebastian Barry (born 1955 in Dublin) is an Irish playwright and novelist. ... Eavan Boland (born 1944) is an Irish poet and essayist. ... Dionne Brand (born January 7, 1953) is a Canadian poet, novelist, and non-fiction writer who focuses on issues relating to black women. ... Michelle Cliff (1946 - ) is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone To Heaven, Abeng, and Free Enterprise. ... J.M. Coetzee John Maxwell Coetzee (pronounced coot-SEE-uh) is a South African author. ... Maryse Condé (born 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984-1985). ... Hamid Dabashi (Persian: ‎ ​) is an Iranian-born American intellectual historian, cultural and literary critic best known for his scholarship on Iran and Shia Islam. ... Cyril Dabydeen is a writer who was born in the Canje, Guyana, in 1945, a locality which also produced his contemporaries Arnold Itwaru and Jan Shinebourne. ... Tsitsi Dangarembga. ... Raywat Deonandan is a Canadian author. ... Anita Desai (b. ... Assia Djebar is the pen-name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (born August 4, 1936), an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. ... Buchi Emecheta (born July 21, 1944) is a Nigerian novelist. ... Martín Espada Martín Espada (born 1957) is a poet and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches creative writing and Latino poetry. ... Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961) was a French author from Martinique, essayist, psychoanalyst, and revolutionary. ... Brian Friel (born January 9, 1929) is a playwright and director from Northern Ireland. ... Harold Athol Lannigan Fugard (b. ... Zulfikar Ghose is a Pakistani-American English language writer. ... Amitav Ghosh (born 1956 in Calcutta), is an Indian author, known for his work in the English language. ... Edouard Glissant (born in Sainte-Marie, Martinique in 1928) is a Francophone writer, poet and literary critic. ... Nadine Gordimer (born 20 November 1923) is a South African novelist and writer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in literature and 1974 Booker Prize. ... Patricia Grace (born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1937) is a notable Māori writer of novels, short stories, and childrens books. ... Mohsin Hamid (born 1971) is a Pakistani author. ... Bonny Hicks (1968–1997) was a Singaporean author and catwalk model. ... Keri Hulme is a New Zealand writer, best known for her debut (and to this point, only) novel, The bone people. ... Kazuo Ishiguro (カズオ・イシグロ Kazuo Ishiguro, originally 石黒一雄 Ishiguro Kazuo, born November 8, 1954) is a British author of Japanese origin. ... Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was a journalist, and a prominent socialist theorist and writer. ... This article is about the writer and poet. ... Farida Karodia is a South African novelist and short-story writer born in 1942. ... Jamaica Kincaid (b. ... Ahmadou Kourouma, (November 24, 1927 – December 11, 2003) was an Ivorian novelist. ... Hanif Kureishi (born December 5, 1954) is a Pakistani-British playwright, screenwriter, and novelist and short story writer on topics of race, nationalism, immigration, and sexuality. ... Jhumpa Lahiri Vourvoulias (born Nilanjana Sudeshna in 1967) (Bengali: ঝুম্পা লাহিড়ী Jhumpa LahiÅ—i) is a contemporary Indian American author based in New York City. ... Doris Lessing, CH, OBE (born October 22, 1919), is a British writer, born Doris May Taylor in Kermanshah, Persia (Iran). ... Earl Lovelace (born July 13, 1935) in Toco, Trinidad and Tobago) is a writer and playwright from the West Indies. ... Sharon Maas was born in Georgetown, Guyana in 1951. ... Jorge Majfud was born in Tacuarembó, Uruguay, in 1969. ... Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987) was a Zimbabwean novelist and poet. ... Kamala Markandaya (? - May 16, 2004), born Kamala Purnaiya Taylor, was an Indian novelist and journalist. ... Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, also known as Gabo (born March 6, 1927 in Aracataca, Magdalena) is a Colombian novelist, journalist, editor, publisher, political activist, and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. ... Yann Martel (born June 25, 1963 in Salamanca, Spain) is a Canadian author best known for the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi. ... Rohinton Mistry (born July 3, 1952) is considered to be one of the foremost authors of South Asian origin writing in English. ... Bharati Mukherjee (born July 27, 1940) is an award-winning Indian born American writer. ... Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, T.C. (born August 17, 1932, in Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago), better known as V. S. Naipaul, is a Trinidadian-born British writer of Indo-Trinidadian ethnicity and Bhumihar Brahmin heritage from Gorakhpur in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. ... R. K. Narayan (October 10, 1906 - May 13, 2001), born Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Narayanaswami,[1] is among the best known and most widely read Indian novelists writing in English. ... Philip Michael Ondaatje, OC (born 12 September 1943) is a Canadian/Sri Lankan novelist and poet perhaps best known for his Booker Prize winning novel adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film, The English Patient. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... Attipat Krishnaswami Ramanujan (1929-1993) was an Indian author, who wrote in both English and Kannada. ... Jean Rhys (August 24, 1890 - May 14, 1979), originally Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a Caribbean novelist who wrote in the mid 20th century. ... Suzanna Arundhati Roy[1] (born November 24, 1961) is an Indian novelist, writer and activist. ... Ahmed Salman Rushdie KBE (Hindi: Urdu: سلمان رشدی; born 19 June 1947) is a British-Indian novelist and essayist. ... Shyam Selvadurai (born 1965) is a Canadian novelist who wrote Funny Boy (1994), which won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and Cinnamon Gardens (1998). ... Samuel Selvon (1923–1994) was a Trinidad-born writer of mixed Indo-Trinidadian and European descent. ... Léopold Sédar Senghor (October 9, 1906 – December 20, 2001) was a Senegalese poet, and politician who served as the first president of Senegal (1960–1980). ... Bapsi Sidhwa (1938 - ) is an important author of Pakistani origin who writes in English. ... Wilbur Addison Smith (born January 9, 1933 in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia)) is an author of fiction. ... Zadie Smith (born October 27, 1975) is an English novelist. ... Akinwande Oluwole Wole Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. ... NgÅ©gÄ© wa Thiongo (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in GÄ©kÅ©yÅ©. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, essays and scholarship, criticism and childrens literature. ... Pramoedya Ananta Toer (February 6 1925 - April 30 2006) was an Indonesian author of novels, short stories, essays, polemics, and histories of his homeland and its people. ... Khal Torabully, a Mauritian and French poet, is closely associated to his concept of coolitude. ... Dr. Yvonne Vera (September 19, 1964 - April 7, 2005) was an award-winning author from Zimbabwe. ... Derek Walcott, courtesy of the Nobel Foundation Derek Alton Walcott (born January 23, 1930) is a West-Indian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who writes mainly in English. ... Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) (November 3, 1920 - 1993) was an Australian poet, actress, writer, teacher, artist and a campaigner for Aboriginal rights. ...

Other important authors in postcolonial theory

Joseph Conrad and Charlotte Brontë are not "postcolonial" authors, but are of specific interest within postcolonial theory in part because postcolonial authors such as Chinua Achebe and Jean Rhys (among others) engage and rework their novels. Shakespeare's The Tempest has a colonial setting and his Othello has a racial dynamic, and both of these are frequent points of reference for postcolonial authors. // Joseph Conrad (born Teodor Józef Konrad NaÅ‚Ä™cz-Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-born novelist who spent most of his adult life in Britain. ... Charlotte Brontë (IPA: ) (April 21, 1816 – March 31, 1855) was an English novelist and the eldest of the three Brontë sisters whose novels have become timeless pieces of English literature. ... Shakespeare redirects here. ...

Notable critics

• Bill Ashcroft
• Jacqueline Bardolph
• Homi K. Bhabha
• Elleke Boehmer
• Guillaume Cingal
• Jean-Pierre Durix
• Frantz Fanon
• Leela Gandhi
• Gareth Griffiths
• Neil Lazarus
• Abiola Irele
• Benita Parry
• Edward Said - Often considered the seminal postcolonial critic.
• Gayatri Spivak
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
• Helen Tiffin
• Khal Torabully
• Robert Young

Homi K. Bhabha (born 1949) is an Indian-American postcolonial theorist. ... Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961) was a French author from Martinique, essayist, psychoanalyst, and revolutionary. ... Leela Gandhi is a senior lecturer at La Trobe University in the English program. ... Gareth John Griffiths (born 10 April 1970 in Winsford, England) is an English footballer, currently playing for Northwich Victoria. ... Francis Abiola Irele, (commonly Abiola Irele), is a Nigerian academic who has been called the doyen of Africanist literary scholars worldwide. ... Edward Wadie Saïd, Arabic: , , (1 November 1935 – 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and outspoken Palestinian activist. ... Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is a deconstructive literary critic and theorist of Indian extraction. ... Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gĩkũyũ. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, essays and scholarship, criticism and childrens literature. ... Helen Tiffin is Professor of English at Queens University and an influential writer in post-colonial theory. ... Khal Torabully, a Mauritian and French poet, is closely associated to his concept of coolitude. ... Robert JC Young, postcolonial theorist and activist, literary critic, and historian. ...

See also

• Colonialism
• TSAR Publications
• Indian English literature
• Francophone literature
• Vernacular literature
• Migrant literature
• Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry

It has been suggested that Benign colonialism be merged into this article or section. ... TSAR Publications is a book publisher focused on bringing readers writing that reflects the multicultural world that we all live in. ... Indian English Literature (IEL) refers to the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. ... Francophone literature is literature written in the French language. ... Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular - the speech of the common people. ... Migrant literature, that is, writings by and to a lesser extent about migrants, is a topic which has commanded growing interest within literary studies since the 1980s. ... The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, in an earlier 1963 edition Modern Poetry from Africa, was a 1984 poetry anthology edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier. ...

References

• A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Liteartures in English edited by Prem Poddar and David Johnson (2005)
• The Arnold Anthology of Post-Colonial Literatures in English edited by John Thieme
• Chelsea 46: World Literature in English (1987)
• Poetry International 7/8 (2003-2004)
• Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English edited by Eugene Benson and L. W. Conolly
• Commonwealth Literature: An Essay Towards the Re-definition of a Popular/Counter Culture by Alamgir Hashmi
• Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors by Elleke Boehmer
• A Sense of Place: Essays in Post-Colonial Literatures edited

by Britta Olinde

• Thompson, Peter, Littérature moderne du monde francophone. (Anthology.) Chicago: NTC (McGraw-Hill), 1997

External links

• Contemporary Postcolonial and Postimperial Literature
• TSAR Publications