In the early 1910s, Semaoen was sentenced to prison for sedition by the Dutch colonial government. The Story of Kadirun, a semi-autobiographical novel, reveals with honesty and comprehensive insight the unjust treatment towards the indigenous people from a historical perspective. Kadirun’s tale, with its picture of the life of the Javanese during the colonial era, tells the readers what must be done to make the world a place fit to live in.

“This century’s most compelling theorist of racism and colonialism.”—Angela DavisThe sixtieth anniversary edition of Frantz Fanon’s landmark text, now with a new introduction by Cornel WestFirst published in 1961, and reissued in this sixtieth anniversary edition with a powerful new introduction by Cornel West, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterful and timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological tra...

“A brilliant and humane philosophy for our confused age.”—Samantha Power, author of A Problem from HellKwame Anthony Appiah’s landmark new work, featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, challenges the separatist doctrines espoused in books like Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations. Reviving the ancient philosophy of “cosmopolitanism,” a school of thought that dates to the Cynics of the fourth century BC, Appiah traces its influence ...

Western Europe is in a strangely neurotic condition of being smug and terrified at the same time. On the one hand, Europeans believe they have at last created an ideal social and political system in which man can live comfortably. In many ways, things have never been better on the old continent. On the other hand, there is growing anxiety that Europe is quickly falling behind in an aggressive, globalized world. Europe is at the forefront of nothing, its demographics are rapidly transformin...

Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006) was undoubtedly Indonesia’s most significant novelist and writer. After the 1960 publication of this book, now translated for the first time, Promoedya spent some 20 years in prison often in appalling conditions. The book sets out in the form of nine letters much of the author’s humanist and deeply anti-racialist philosophy as it discussed the history and needs of Indonesia’s large and long-established Chinese population who were facing increasing official...

Is protest broken? Micah White, co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, thinks so. Disruptive tactics have failed to halt the rise of Donald Trump. Movements ranging from Black Lives Matter to environmentalism are leaving activists frustrated. Meanwhile, recent years have witnessed the largest protests in human history. Yet these mass mobilizations no longer change society. Now activism is at a crossroads: innovation or irrelevance.In The End of Protest Micah White heralds the f...

Three extraordinary and impassioned nonfiction works by Richard Wright, one of America's premier literary giants of the twentieth century, together in one volume, with an introduction by Cornel West.“The time is ripe to return to [Wright’s] vision and voice in the face of our contemporary catastrophes and hearken to his relentless commitment to freedom and justice for all.” — Cornel West (from the Introduction)Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos is Richar...

The Nobel Prize winner reflects on living "in a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures."In this perceptive collection of essays, Doris Lessing considers the savage past of our species and the remnants of it that seem to regularly erupt in our supposedly advanced and civilized world. Ultimately, she directly addresses the prime questions before us all: how to think for ourselves, how to understand what ...

'Perhaps the best introduction yet to the roots of Thailand's present political impasse. A brilliant book.'Simon Long, The EconomistStruggling to emerge from a despotic past, and convulsed by an intractable conflict that will determine its future, Thailand stands at a defining moment in its history. Scores have been killed on the streets of Bangkok. Freedom of speech is routinely denied. Democracy appears increasingly distant. And many Thais fear that the death of K...

The companion to a series of lectures given by Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in which she addresses some of the most important questions facing us today.‘This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that – a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that...

This landmark work challenges the separatist doctrines which have come to dominate our understanding of the world. Appiah revives the ancient philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, which dates back to the Cynics of the 4th century, as a means of understanding the complex world of today. Arguing that we concentrate too much on what makes us different rather than recognising our common humanity, Appiah explores how we can act ethically in a globalised world.

In 1992, a gang leader was shot dead by an ANC member in Kroonstad. The murder weapon was then hidden on Antjie Krog’s stoep. In Begging to Be Black, Krog begins by exploring her position in this controversial case. From there the book ranges widely in scope, both in time - reaching back to the days of Basotho king Moshoeshoe - and in space - as we follow Krog’s experiences as a research fellow in Berlin, far from the Africa that produced her. Begging to Be Black is a book of journeys - mo...