World & Postcolonial Literature

The father of modern drama — who put the middle-class living room on stage and took it apart.

Doctor, story writer, and the dramatist who replaced plot with atmosphere and subtext.

The writer who gave the twentieth century its image of bureaucratic nightmare — and asked for it all to be burned.

Dominican-born novelist who gave the madwoman in the attic her own voice and childhood.

Invented a theatre designed to stop audiences losing themselves in it.

The philosopher of the absurd who insisted that life without meaning must still be lived without appeal.

Novelist of apartheid from inside white South Africa — and an activist who was banned repeatedly.

The novelist who made magic realism a world style — and Macondo a place readers believe in.

The founding novelist of modern African literature — who answered the colonial library from the inside.

The Caribbean poet who claimed the whole European tradition and rewrote it from the archipelago.

Trinidad-born Nobel laureate of the postcolonial world — brilliant, unsparing, and permanently contested.

The first African Nobel laureate in literature — dramatist, political prisoner, and lifelong dissident.

The novelist who abandoned English for Gikuyu — and made language itself the last colonial battleground.

Twice a Booker winner and a Nobel laureate — austere, allegorical, and reluctant to explain himself.