Ruth First was an internationally known anti-apartheid activist who was a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC). In 1982, she was assassinated in Maputo, Mozambique, by a mail bomb sent by the apartheid government.Christopher J. Lee is a historian who has written or edited thirteen previous books on different aspects of decolonization, global history, and the South African Left. He has held academic appointments at universities in Africa, Asia, and North America. As Co-General Editor, he is currently completing the five-volume Cambridge History of Colonialism and Decolonization.

In her cruelly abbreviated life, Ruth First courageously grappled with a range of political conditions and mentalities. In The Barrel of a Gun, she transmuted her intimate experience of political adversity into lucid and unsparing insight into postcolonial realities and possibilities. No one interested in the past, present or future of Asia and Africa can afford to miss reading it.