Rushdie observes that British literature at the time was suffering from a kind of exhaustion or inward-looking parochialism. In contrast, the literature of the "Empire" was exploding with vitality. He suggests that the British literary establishment is in denial about this shift, often patronizing colonial writers by viewing their work through a lens of exoticism rather than acknowledging their structural and linguistic superiority.

Imaginary Homelands (1991) and Step Across This Line (2002) contain many of his most vengeful non-fiction pieces. PDFs of individual chapters circulate widely.

: For early essays or public domain influences.

Rushdie contends that the colonized have begun to write back to the colonizers, challenging this dominant discourse and reclaiming their narratives. This "writing back" is a metaphor for the ways in which postcolonial writers have engaged with and subverted the colonial discourse, creating counter-narratives that contest the Western perspective. Through their writing, these authors have sought to decolonize the mind, to use Ngugi wa Thiong'o's phrase, and to assert their cultural identities.