Plays
- Keffi's Birthday Treat (1954)
- The Invention (1957)
- The Swamp Dwellers (1958)
- A Quality of Violence (1959)[133]
- The Lion and the Jewel (1959)
- The Trials of Brother Jero (1960)
- A Dance of the Forests (1960)
- My Father's Burden (1960)
- The Strong Breed (1964)
- Before the Blackout (1964)
- Kongi's Harvest (1964)
- The Road (1965)
- Madmen and Specialists (1970)
- The Bacchae of Euripides (1973)
- Camwood on the Leaves (1973)
- Jero's Metamorphosis (1973)
- Death and the King's Horseman (1975)
- Opera Wonyosi (1977)
- Requiem for a Futurologist (1983)
- A Play of Giants (1984)
- Childe Internationale (1987)[134][135]
- From Zia with Love (1992)
- The Detainee (radio play)
- A Scourge of Hyacinths (radio play)
- The Beatification of Area Boy (1996)
- Document of Identity (radio play, 1999)
- King Baabu (2001)
- Etiki Revu Wetin
- Alapata Apata (2011)
- "Thus Spake Orunmila" (in Sixty-Six Books (2011)[136]
Novels
- The Interpreters (1965)
- Season of Anomy (1973)
- Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (Bookcraft, Nigeria; Bloomsbury, UK; Pantheon, US, 2021)[137][138]
- Harmattan Haze on an African Spring
Short stories
- A Tale of Two (1958)
- Egbe's Sworn Enemy (1960)
- Madame Etienne's Establishment (1960)
Memoirs
- The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972)
- Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981)
- Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: a memoir 1945–1965 (1989)
- Ìsarà: A Voyage around Essay (1989)
- You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006)
Poetry collections
- Telephone Conversation (1963) (appeared in Modern Poetry in Africa)
- Idanre and other poems (1967)
- A Big Airplane Crashed into The Earth (original title Poems from Prison) (1969)
- A Shuttle in the Crypt (1971)
- Ogun Abibiman (1976)
- Mandela's Earth and other poems (1988)
- Early Poems (1997)
- Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002)
Essays
- "Towards a True Theater" (1962)
- Culture in Transition (1963)
- Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition
- A Voice That Would Not Be Silenced
- Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture (1988)
- From Drama and the African World View (1976)
- Myth, Literature, and the African World (1976)[139]
- The Blackman and the Veil (1990)[140]
- The Credo of Being and Nothingness (1991)
- The Burden of Memory – The Muse of Forgiveness (1999)
- A Climate of Fear (the BBC Reith Lectures 2004, audio and transcripts)
- New Imperialism (2009)[141]
- Of Africa (2012)[142][143]
- Beyond Aesthetics: Use, Abuse, and Dissonance in African Art Traditions (2019)
Films
- Kongi's Harvest
- Culture in Transition
- Blues for a Prodigal
Translations
- The Forest of a Thousand Demons: A Hunter's Saga (1968; a translation of D. O. Fagunwa's Ògbójú Ọdẹ nínú Igbó Irúnmalẹ̀)
- In the Forest of Olodumare (2010; a translation of D. O. Fagunwa's Igbo Olodumare)
