The history of African literature extends through a vast span of time, beginning thousands of years before the birth of Christ. The first pieces of known African literature on paper, Egyptian burial scrolls, date to 2300 to 2100 BC. Hieroglyphics on architecture predate these scrolls by 1,000 years or more. The literature of Africa underwent many stages since its inception in ancient Egypt, including African Empire literature from post-Egyptian kingdoms that lasted from the first to 15th century of the Common Era, slave trade and European imperialism literature, anti-colonial literature and the postindependence literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. The first examples of sub-Saharan literature appeared in 1520 and bore a heavy resemblance to Islamic literature, a clear influence.
Scholars such as Jonathan P Smithe, editor of the book "African literature: Overview and Bibliography," stress that African literature differs greatly from other literature such as English, Japanese or Russian for two primary reasons. First and foremost, African literature constitutes the literature of an entire continent and represents more than 50 countries. Furthermore, African writers use a number of languages when creating literature, including indigenous languages such as ancient Egyptian and various local, tribal languages to Arabic, English and French. African writers who speak multiple languages often use language to express a theme or idea, such as writing in an indigenous language as an anti-colonial statement.
The themes and topics of African literature ultimately relate to the period from which specific works come. Anti-colonialist literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, for instance, directly addressed issues of sovereignty and oppression, while postindependence literature commonly tackles the tangled history of Africa since the decline of the empires and the way in which this history shaped African self-identity and global image. Racism as a theme pervades African literature since the age of slavery. African literature contains elements of modern and ancient religions, including Egyptian paganism, Islam and Christianity, while incorporating elements of realism, magical realism, postmodernism and African myth.
Chinua Achebe became the first internationally recognized native African writer of the modern age with the publication of his seminal work "Things Fall Apart," which examined life and identity in colonial Africa from a native perspective. Famous precolonial works of African literature include the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Swahili "Shrine of Ancestors" and the ancient Epic of Sundiata. Important modern works include "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston, Alan Paton's play "Cry the Beloved Country" and psychological text "Black Skin, White Masks" by Frantz Fanon.