Political prisoner and anti-apartheid activist Ruth First addressing one of the most notorious and complicated phenomena in postcolonial Africa--the coup d'état If Frantz Fanon had not died of cancer in 1961 at the age of thirty-six, what might a sequel to The Wretched of the Earth look like? What political issues of the postcolony might it confront? And what theories of postcolonial state power might it develop? Ruth First's The Barrel of a Gun provides one possible answer to these speculative questions. The Barrel of a Gun is the first book First wrote while in exile, and it marks a departure from her prison memoir. It is several things at once: an academic analysis of postcolonial power dynamics in Africa; a political history of Africa during the 1960s; and a document of her life and political views at the time.