1. Postwar and Postcolonial Literature, 1945–1968 (Volume F)

2. Cold War
The United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a Cold War: their most powerful weapons would be capable of annihilating the planet. Two sides—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), representing Western Europe and North America; and the Warsaw Pact, uniting the military forces of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe—divided most of the globe into spheres of influence. By 1949, with China’s Communist Revolution, almost half of the world’s population lived under communism. Both sides understood that either side launching a nuclear attack would result in “mutually assured destruction.”
The image is American propaganda during the Cold War, showing the feared threat of Communism.

3. de-Stalinization
Within the Communist world, the purges and mass imprisonments initiated by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin were selectively repudiated after his death in During this period, the works of the dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn were briefly allowed to be published.
The photograph shows Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at the Yalta Summit (1945). Army Signal Corps Collection, US National Archives.

4. Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution
Stalin’s techniques spread to Mao’s China. The forced collectivization of the Great Leap Forward (1958–59) led to a famine that caused an estimated twenty million deaths, while the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and lasted until Mao’s death in 1976, attacked intellectuals and the middle classes, resulting in the destruction of most of the country’s functioning institutions.
The left image caption reads: “Backyard furnace in the countryside, where people try to produce steel during the night time.” China’s Great Leap Forward, The right image caption reads: During the Cultural Revolution, walls in China were painted with words in red writing from the Quotations of Chairman Mao (The Little Red Book).” The translation reads “The Chinese Communist Party is the core of leadership of the Chinese people. Without this core, the cause of socialism cannot win.”

5. Decolonization
The colonial powers of Western Europe, facing pressures from nationalist movements among their subject peoples, began to relinquish direct political control of their colonies. The process of decolonization, often accompanied by conflicts over redrawn borders, became a major topic for a generation of writers who, though born in the formerly colonized nations, were more likely to have been educated in Europe. Algeria became one of the bloodiest colonial battlefields until its independence in 1962.
The painting, by Eugene Fromentin, is titled At the Well (1875). The caption reads: “During the French rule in Algeria (1830–1962), North Africa played a key role in French life, serving as a training ground for its army and attracting writers and artists. Fromentin, an influential writer and painter, first visited Algeria in 1846 and returned the following year. He wrote two books that stimulated widespread interest in the region.

6. Decolonization (continued)
Britain divided its territorial possessions in South Asia into two states, India and Pakistan, on August 14, The transfer of populations and communal violence involved before and after this division are recounted in works by Manto and Rushdie. Britain also left its former Palestinian territories in the hands of Israel, leading to new wars between Israel and Arab Palestinians, as recounted in works by Amichai and Darwish. A Pan-Arabist movement for Muslim unity, sometimes oriented toward Socialism, arose and was represented by writers such as Mahfouz and Salih in North Africa. In Africa, writers typically explore village life as it has been transformed by contact with Europeans and then by the process of establishing independence. The Sub-Saharan African writers, such as Doris Lessing, describe the civil war and minority rule by white settler communities.
The image shows Egyptian premier Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein (right) with the prime minister of the Sudan, Ismail Al Azhari, clasping hands among a crowd of supporters in Egypt in July, Nasser, a central figure in the Egyptian revolution of 1952, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, became Egypt’s president in 1956.

7. Green Revolution
The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s improved agricultural methods in the developing world and made it possible to feed a rapidly expanding population, while smallpox was eliminated and other serious illnesses, such as tuberculosis, malaria, and plague, were brought under control.
Photograph of Norman Borlaug, the “father of the Green Revolution” (June 2003).

8. Writers
The theme of choice became critical to a generation of authors who had had to decide between allegiance or resistance. The philosophy of existentialism emphasized the role of free choice in human life. In different ways, writers including Borowski (a Polish journalist), Beckett, Camus, and Celan, turned to a stripped-down literary style—either direct and realistic, like Camus and Borowski, or elusive and minimalist, like Celan and Beckett—moving away from the modernism of the earlier part of the century.
The photograph shows Albert Camus (1957). New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. Library of Congress.

9. Civil Rights Movement: United States
Racial segregation and the disenfranchisement of African Americans were challenged in the civil rights movement, whose landmarks included the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which banned segregation in public accommodations and outlawed discriminatory voter registration. Writers, such as James Baldwin, explored challenges that African Americans faced in the North during and after World War II, also inspiring the emergence of Native American culture to reemerge, as represented by transcriptions by Peynetsa.
The image is a photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mathew Ahmann at a civil rights march on Washington, D.C. (August 28, 1963). National Archives and Records Administration.

10. Elements of Style intersection of oral and written forms hybridity
globalization
rethinking “homeland”
dismantling “cultural uniqueness”
“neorealism”
With increasing globalization of literature and the media, writers frequently adapted certain genres to local conditions, using the language of traditional literature to produce a colloquial story, or transforming a European genre by introducing elements of local customs and storytelling techniques. Encounters between indigenous societies and widely accepted literary forms caused writers to rethink the characteristics of their homeland; many valued hybrid qualities that dismantled claims to cultural uniqueness or homogeneity. Much writing of the postwar engages in “neorealism”—a return to political and social issues, in contrast to the interiority and linguistic inventiveness of the modernists.

11. Postmodernism limits of literature problems with meaning
instability of language
“metafiction” and “metatheater”
Writers including Nabokov, Borges, Cortázar, and Beckett are among writers who introduced characteristics that became associated with postmodernism. They called attention to their use of language and choice of literary form, sensing the limits of literature’s ability to find meaning in the world. Their works reflect a consciousness of the instability of language and its potential to carry multiple meanings, and a concern with the boundary between fiction and reality—what is sometimes called “metafiction” or “metatheater.”

12. Test Your Knowledge The Cold War pitted which two superpowers?
a. the Soviet Union and China b. China and the United States c. the United States and the Soviet Union d. the United States and Vietnam
Answer: C
Section: Postwar and Postcolonial Literature, 1945–1968
Feedback: By the middle of the twentieth century, the United States and the Soviet Union (the world’s primary superpowers) were locked into the Cold War; i.e., a stalemate between both sides that possessed enough fire power to destroy not just “the enemy” but the entire planet.

13. Test Your Knowledge
What revolution of the 1960s and 1970s improved agricultural methods and made it possible to feed ever-increasing populations?
a. the Cultural Revolution b. the Eco Revolution c. the Agricultural Revolution d. the Green Revolution
Answer: D
Section: Postwar and Postcolonial Literature, 1945–1968
Feedback: The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s allowed many nations to better provide for their rapidly growing populations. However, despite advances in food production and medicine, and despite growing prosperity in many developed nations, dire famine and poverty continued to exist in some underdeveloped nations (primarily in Africa and South Asia).

14. Test Your Knowledge
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children discusses the decolonization of which countries?
a. Pakistan and India b. North and South Korea c. Rhodesia and Zimbabwe d. Israel and Palestine
Answer: A
Section: Postwar and Postcolonial Literature, 1945–1968
Feedback: Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children discusses the decolonization of British-held territories in South Asia and the “partitioning” of India from Pakistan.

15. Test Your Knowledge
The Supreme Court decision in the United States, Brown v. Board of Education had what effect?
a. It ended public school funding b. It ended public transportation segregation c. It ended public school segregation d. It ended standardized testing
Answer: C
Section: Postwar and Postcolonial Literature, 1945–1968
Feedback: The 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, ended (or was intended to end) public school segregation. This decision was an important moment in the civil rights movement in the United States.

16. Test Your Knowledge
Postcolonial writers tend to favor which of the following?
a. homogeneity b. experimentation c. metafiction d. hybridity
Answer: D
Section: Postwar and Postcolonial Literature, 1945–1968
Feedback: The postwar period was a time characterized by great artistic diversity and hybridity: the mixing of traditions, genres, subjects, and styles. This sense of mixed-ness in art reflects what was reality for many postcolonial artists: they came from mixed heritage, they learned from a mix of traditions, and their native homelands may have been ruled by a number of different powers (both colonial and indigenous). Thus, they sought to represent diversity in their work and to challenge long-held beliefs in the value of homogeneity and purity.

17. This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for The Norton Anthology
of World Literature