The 100 best moderately difficult books about race and colonialism

No. 11 on this list. The Bluest Eye · Toni Morrison · 1970

Taught in schools: Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US)

While not as universally canonical as Beloved, The Bluest Eye is firmly established in the American literary canon, widely taught in universities, and recognized as a landmark debut that announced a major voice in American letters.

No. 12 on this list. Benito Cereno · Herman Melville · 1855

One of the most taught American novellas, central to literary discussions of race, slavery, and narrative perspective.

No. 13 on this list. Kindred · Octavia E. Butler · 1979

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Kindred is required reading in African American literature, American history, and science fiction courses at universities across the United States and internationally. It appears on the Modern Library's reader list of the 100 best novels and is frequently paired with primary sources on American slavery. Octavia Butler is the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, and Kindred is her most assigned work.

No. 14 on this list. The Weary Blues · Langston Hughes · 1926

Hughes's debut collection is a standard text in American literature and African American studies courses. Individual poems like 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' and 'The Weary Blues' appear in virtually every major poetry anthology. The collection anchors Harlem Renaissance units at universities across the country, representing a canonical status below the most-taught novels but above most poetry collections.

No. 15 on this list. Wide Sargasso Sea · Jean Rhys · 1966

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council, WJEC/Eduqas GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

The postcolonial revision that changed how we read Jane Eyre. Antoinette/Bertha's story—the madwoman in the attic given voice—became essential feminist and postcolonial criticism. Core text in Caribbean literature and courses on literary rewriting.

No. 16 on this list. The Selected Works of Audre Lorde · Audre Lorde · 2020

Lorde is taught across literature, gender studies and Black studies.

No. 17 on this list. The Piano Lesson · August Wilson · 1987

The Piano Lesson is a fixture in American drama and literature courses, taught alongside O'Neill, Miller, and Williams as a canonical American play. It is the centerpiece of August Wilson's ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle, a sequence now treated as essential reading in university drama programs. Its Pulitzer Prize win and sustained presence in curricula place it well above mid-tier literary works.

No. 18 on this list. Disgrace · J.M. Coetzee · 1999

Appears on approximately 1,020 university syllabi according to the Open Syllabus Project, placing it at the 75th percentile of taught texts—significant presence in postcolonial literature, world fiction, and contemporary novel courses. A Wikipedia article in 19 languages confirms global reach. Standard in courses on Southern African literature and in postcolonial studies globally.

No. 19 on this list. Fences · August Wilson · 1985

Fences appears regularly on university syllabi in American drama, African American literature, and theater history courses. It is one of the two plays — alongside Death of a Salesman — most frequently assigned when teaching 20th-century American drama. The 2016 film adaptation brought it to wider global audiences, and it remains central to any serious survey of postwar American theater.

No. 20 on this list. Mansfield Park · Jane Austen · 1814

While less universally beloved than Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park holds secure canonical status as Austen's most morally complex and tonally difficult novel. Its treatment of slavery, colonialism, and evangelical morality has made it increasingly central to academic study, though it remains somewhat less embraced by general readers than her lighter works.

No. 21 on this list. A Grain of Wheat · Ngugi wa Thiong'o · 1967

Included in: Heinemann African Writers Series

Major postcolonial novel; widely taught in African and world literature.

No. 22 on this list. Exile and the Kingdom · Albert Camus · 1957

While less central to Camus's legacy than 'The Stranger' or 'The Plague,' the collection maintains secure canonical status as his final fiction published during his lifetime. It appears regularly in world literature curricula and critical studies of existentialism, though its story format and thematic subtlety place it slightly below his more famous novels.

No. 23 on this list. Native Son · Richard Wright

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Appears on 1,009 university syllabi (75th percentile in the Open Syllabus Project), placing it firmly in the American literary canon. Listed on both the TIME All-TIME 100 Novels and the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, confirming sustained institutional endorsement across decades.

No. 24 on this list. The Conservationist · Nadine Gordimer · 1974

Mehring, a wealthy Johannesburg industrialist, has purchased a farm outside the city—less for profit than as refuge from his collapsing marriage, his estranged radical son, and his unsatisfying affair. When a dead Black man is found on his land, hastily buried by police who cannot identify the body, Mehring treats it as bureaucratic nuisance rather than moral crisis. He prides himself on being a progressive landowner who pays fair wages and respects his workers, yet his liberalism cannot acknowledge the corpse as ancestral claim or historical reckoning. Gordimer narrates through Mehring's evasive consciousness, her prose registering the minutiae of farm management—cattle diseases, pasture conditions, labor arrangements—while circling obsessively around the burial site he tries to forget. The narrative crosscuts between his weekend visits and the farm's rhythms in his absence, where workers Jacobus and Solomon maintain routines inflected by meanings Mehring cannot access. When floods exhume the body, the workers perform proper burial rites, restoring him to the land in ceremonies that supersede Mehring's title deeds. Gordimer withholds resolution: Mehring remains uncomprehending, his ownership revealed as legal fiction layered atop deeper claims the novel anatomizes but does not resolve.

No. 25 on this list. Mr. Sammler's Planet · Saul Bellow · 1971

Winner of the 1971 National Book Award, the novel secured Bellow's position as America's preeminent intellectual novelist. It appears regularly on 20th-century American fiction syllabi and maintains strong presence in academic discourse on postwar Jewish-American literature. While not achieving the iconic status of 'Herzog' or 'Humboldt's Gift,' it remains central to Bellow's major-period reputation and discussions of Holocaust literature's second generation.

No. 26 on this list. Six Feet of the Country · Nadine Gordimer · 1956

Widely recognized as a cornerstone of post-colonial and South African literature. Appears consistently in university curricula and anthologies of significant twentieth-century short fiction. Represents a crucial moment in articulating apartheid-era social consciousness.

No. 27 on this list. Tar Baby · Toni Morrison · 1981

On Isle des Chevaliers, a Caribbean island reshaped by Haitian labor and American money, Valerian Street — a retired Philadelphia candy magnate — cultivates hydrangeas in his greenhouse and avoids his neighbors. His wife Margaret, his butler Sydney and cook Ondine, and his niece Jadine, a model trained in Paris, share the villa in a state of maintained tension. When Son — a Black American fugitive who stowed away on their supply boat — is discovered hiding in the house, he breaks open every unspoken arrangement the household depends on. Morrison uses the folk tale of the tar baby as the novel's armature: Jadine and Son become stuck to each other in a relationship that neither can survive and neither can leave. She embodies what he calls racial betrayal — educated in Europe, photographed in furs, at home nowhere. He embodies what she calls romantic primitivism — a man out of time, faithful to a Black Southern past that she finds suffocating. Morrison writes this conflict without a referee. The Caribbean setting is not backdrop but argument — the swamp, the rain forest, the blind horsemen who ride the hills at night all carry the weight of African spiritual history beneath the colonial surface. The novel ends on a mythic image: Son running toward those horsemen, Jadine flying back to Paris. Morrison offers no verdict on who was right.

No. 28 on this list. The Home and the World · Rabindranath Tagore · 1916

The Home and the World is one of Tagore's most celebrated novels and a staple of postcolonial literature syllabi worldwide. Written by the first non-European Nobel laureate, it occupies a significant position in the global literary canon, particularly in discussions of Indian literature, nationalism, and modernity. Satyajit Ray's 1984 film adaptation further cemented its cultural status. It appears in 7 Wikipedia languages and has remained continuously in print for over a century.

No. 29 on this list. Rabbit Redux · John Updike · 1971

The Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy is a fixture of American literature courses at the university level, regularly anthologized and assigned alongside Bellow, Roth, and Cheever as representative of postwar American fiction. Rabbit Redux specifically appears on syllabi examining Vietnam-era literature and American masculinity. The series commands a Wikipedia presence in dozens of languages as a defining work of late-20th-century American realism.

No. 30 on this list. El Filibusterismo · José Rizal · 1891

Included in: UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

El Filibusterismo holds canonical status as the Philippine national novel alongside Noli Me Tangere—required by law in Philippine schools—and is recognized globally as a foundational postcolonial text written before the term existed. Rizal was executed by Spanish colonial authorities partly on the basis of having written it, cementing its status as literature that changed history.