Postcolonial literature is the body of literary writings that respond to the intellectual discourses of European colonization in Asia, Africa, Middle East, the Pacific and elsewhere. Postcolonial literature addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country and of a nation, especially the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated colonial peoples; it also covers literary critiques of and about postcolonial literature, the undertones of which carry, communicate, and justify racialism and colonialism. But most contemporary forms of postcolonial literature present literary and intellectual critiques of the postcolonial discourse by endeavouring to assimilate postcolonialism and its literary expressions.