Here is a very short list of some books, mainly by writers and thinkers from the South, which are sharply critical of modern knowledge frameworks, offer a radically different account of modernity, are important landmarks of anti-colonialism, or are important works in contemporary world literature. This is very much a personal list and not even remotely exhaustive; some of the omissions, particularly of scholars from the Euro-American sphere, are obvious.
Every effort has been made to include works that derive from different 'disciplines', blur genres, and speak to a wide array of concerns. The original date of publication is given, not of the English translation.
- Aime Cesaire (Martinique), Discourse on Colonialism (1955)
- Ali Shariati (Iran), Marxism and Other Western Fallacies: An Islamic Critique (1980)
- Amitav Ghosh (India), In an Antique Land (1992)
- Ashis Nandy (India), The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (1982), The Romance of the Tropics and the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics (2003)
- Ashis Nandy (ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity (1988)
- C L R James (Trinidad/UK), The Black Jacobins (1938) and Beyond a Boundary (1963)
- Claude Alvares (India), Science, Development and Violence (1992)
- C. Douglas Lummis (Japan/US), Radical Democracy (1996)
- Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay), Memory of Fire (3 vols., 1980)
- Frantz Fanon (Martinique/Algeria), Wretched of the Earth (1961)
- Frederique Apffel-Marglin (ed.), The Spirit of Regeneration: Andean Culture Confronting Western Notions of Development (1998)
- Gustavo Esteva (Mexico), Escaping Education: Living as Learning at the Grassroots (1998)
- Ivan Illich (Mexico), Deschooling Society (1971), Toward a History of Needs (1977), and Shadow Work (1981)
- James Baldwin (US; African-American), The Fire Next Time (1963)
- Janet Abu-Lughod (Egypt/US), Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (1989)
- Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Glimpses of World History (1934)
- Jit Singh Uberoi (India), Science and Culture (1978)
- K. M. Panikkar (India), Asia and Western Dominance (1959)
- Keri Hulme (Maori), The Bone People (1985)
- Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Maori) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999)
- Majid Rahnema (ed.) (Iran/France), The Post-Development Reader (1997)
- Mohandas K. Gandhi (India), Hind Swaraj (1909) and Autobiography (1925)
- Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Kenya), Decolonising the Mind (1986)
- Nuruddin Farah (Sudan), Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship (3 vols): Sweet & Sour Milk (1979), Sardines (1981), and Close Sesame (1983)
- Paulo Freire (Brazil), Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)
- Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Indonesia), The Buru Quartet (4 vols): This Earth of Mankind (1980), Child of All Nations (1980), Footsteps (1985), and House of Glass (1988)
- Sandra Harding (US), The 'Racial' Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future (1993)
- Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (Mexico), Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings (2001)
- Vinay Lal (India/US) and Ashis Nandy (eds.), The Future of Knowledge and Culture: A Dictionary for the 21st Century (2005)
- Walter Rodney (Guyana), A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 (1981)
- Wolfgang Sachs (ed.) (Germany), The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge and Power (1992)
- Ziauddin Sardar (Pakistan/UK), Ashis Nandy, and Merryl Wyn Davies (Wales), Barbaric Others: A Manifesto on Western Racism (1993)