Chinua Achebe's novels, Things Fall Apart (1958) and No Longer at Ease (1960), explore Nigeria's encounter with colonialism, spanning from the initial interaction with the British to the 1950s.

West Indian poet Derek Walcott, whose poem "Swamp" inspired the title of Ngugi’s novel, delves into his conflicting loyalties to Africa and Britain in "A Far Cry from Africa" (1990).

In Ngugi's novel The River Between (1965), Christian missionaries strive to ban the female circumcision ritual, causing a division between two Gikuyu communities. This conflict leaves individuals torn between embracing Western and Christian beliefs or clinging to their traditional customs. The escalating tension leads to tragedy for a young couple trying to bridge the divide.

A Grain of Wheat (1967) is Ngugi's gripping narrative of five friends who make divergent decisions during the Mau Mau Rebellion in colonial Kenya.

Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1981) chronicles Ngugi's reflections and experiences during his year-long imprisonment by the Kenyan government, despite not being formally charged with any crime.

Ngugi describes Decolonising the Mind (1986) as "a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism and in the teaching of literature." In this book, Ngugi elaborates on his decision to cease writing in English and instead use his native Gikuyu.

I Will Marry When I Want (1982) is Ngugi's translation of his 1977 Gikuyu-language play, which he staged in his hometown of Limuru. The play, addressing the land appropriation by wealthy landowners and the struggles of factory workers, resonated deeply with the local populace and led to Ngugi's detention without trial at the end of 1977.

Contrasting sharply with the protest literature of African and Asian authors, Rudyard Kipling's poem "White Man's Burden" (1899) reflects the prevalent nineteenth-century belief that white Europeans had a responsibility to "civilize" the "less enlightened" inhabitants of the non-Western world.

Isak Dinesen's novel Out of Africa (1937) offers a depiction of the landscape and people of British East Africa before World War II, from the perspective of a wealthy European woman living on a coffee plantation in Kenya.