Barriers, Borders and Crossings in British Postcolonial Fiction by
"Dr. Cecilia Acquarone's perceptive analysis of liminality in British postcolonial fiction from a gender perspective constitutes an innovative, thought-provoking and crystal-clear study of female 'versus' male responses to the challenges of postmodernity as exemplified by significant British postcolonial writers. The book can be justly praised for the lucid use of theoretical language and the exploration of modern and postmodern ideology in an unobstrusive form, pinpointing the most significant phenomena related to the topic in question. Dr. Acquarone locates the relevance of barriers, borders and crossings with gender on the agenda within the realm of tragedy and comedy, providing a sensible and sensitive humanistic approach to the works of some of the most outstanding authors of British postcolonial fiction. In sum, Cecilia Acquarone's book is undoubtedly an invaluable contribution to the field of British postcolonial studies." -- Dr. Antonio Ballesteros-Gonzalez, Spanish Open University. Cecilia Acquarone's "Barriers, Borders and Crossing in British Postcolonial Fiction: A Gender Perspective is a particularly interesting contribution to the field of postcolonial criticism due to its perceptive intertwining of a sound theoretical background and a sensitive close reading of representative novels by major writers of contemporary multicultural Britain. In a clear prose, she sheds light on highly complex philosophical and sociological issues, expounding on what the feminine and the masculine perspective can contribute to the hard task of peaceful coexistence in contemporary British multicultural society." -- Angeles de la Concha, Catedratica de Filologia Inglesa, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia. "Barriers, Borders and Crossing in British Postcolonial Fiction: A Gender Perspective provides an original attempt to map an increasingly visible body of writing in the UK in recent years. In her analysis of key novels by black and Asian British writers, the author highlights an opposition between the predominantly tragic vision of life of the male authors and the fundamentally comic vision of life found in the women writers. The author offers a provocative reading of recent black and Asian British fiction as postmodernist works in which the writers respond differently to contemporary conditions. The volume is a significant contribution to the field of postcolonial studies and diaspora studies, and its use of the comedy-tragedy paradigm to understand recent fiction enriches more common approaches to the two major ways of experiencing and discussing diaspora. -- Dr. Sofia Munoz-Valdivieso, Associate Professor, University of Malaga
EnvironMentality: ecocriticism and the event of postcolonial fiction by
This book addresses the role and potential of literature in the process of contesting and re-evaluating concepts of nature and animality, describing one's individual environment as the starting point for such negotiations. It employs the notion of the 'literary event' to discuss the specific literary quality of verbal art conceptualised as EnvironMentality. EnvironMentality is grounded on the understanding that fiction does not explain or second scientific and philosophical notions but that it poses a fundamental challenge to any form of knowledge manifesting in processes determined by the human capacity to think beyond a given hermeneutic situation.Bartosch foregrounds the dialectics of understanding the other by means of literary interpretation in ecocritical readings of novels by Amitav Ghosh, Zakes Mda, Yann Martel, Margaret Atwood and J.M. Coetzee, arguing that EnvironMentality helps us as readers of fiction to learn from the books we read that which can only be learned by means of reading: to "think like a mountain" (Aldo Leopold) and to know "what it is like to be a bat" (Thomas Nagel).
Ex-Centric Writing : essays on madness in postcolonial fiction by
The concern with identity and belonging, with place/dis-placement is a major feature of postcolonial literature and the theme of alienation cannot but be topical in the literatures of the countries that have experienced the cultural shock and bereavement, and the physical and psychic trauma of colonial invasion. The purpose of this volume is to qualify the difference one is faced with when a postcolonial ex-centric text is addressed, by collecting essays concerned with writers from Southern Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, the Indian subcontinent and Asian diaspora(s). While giving contextual specifics their due, it shows how the theme of alienation, when perceived through the anamorphic lens of madness, is magnified and charged with an excruciatingly questioning and destabilizing power, laying bare political as well as existential and moral urges. From the ex-centric, broadly exilic position, it is the ideology and practice of colonialism that demand to be rubricated as psychopathology. More broadly, as these essays highlight, in fiction the mad character's ex-centric vision is a continuous warning against the temptation to believe in those discourses that pass themselves off as reflecting the given, natural, order of things.
Imagining London : postcolonial fiction and the transnational metropolis by
London was once the hub of an empire on which 'the sun never set.' After the second world war, as Britain withdrew from most of its colonies, the city that once possessed the world began to contain a diasporic world that was increasingly taking possession of it. Drawing on postcolonial theories - as well as interdisciplinary perspectives from cultural geography, urban theory, history, and sociology - "Imagining London" examines representations of the English metropolis in Canadian, West Indian, South Asian, and second-generation 'black British' novels written in the last half of the twentieth century. It analyzes the diverse ways in which London is experienced and portrayed as a transnational space by Commonwealth expatriates and migrants. As the former 'heart of empire' and a contemporary 'world city, ' London metonymically represents the British Empire in two distinct ways. In the early years of decolonization, it is a primarily white city that symbolizes imperial power and history. Over time, as migrants from former colonies have 'reinvaded the centre' and changed its demographic and cultural constitution, it has come to represent empire geographically and spatially as a global microcosm. John Clement Ball examines the work of more than twenty writers, including established authors such as Robertson Davies, Mordecai Richler, Jean Rhys, Sam Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, Anita Desai, and Salman Rushdie, and newer voices such as Catherine Bush, David Dabydeen, Amitav Ghosh, Hanif Kureishi, and Zadie Smith.
The Iraqi Novel : key writers, key texts by
Studies a neglected area of postcolonial fiction, fostering a better understanding of Iraqi culture and society This exploration of the work of Iraqi novelists begins with the early pioneering works and then moves towards an outline of the vibrant Baghdad cultural scene during the 1940s and 1950s. Particular attention is paid to detailed textual analysis and the evaluation and comparison of the aesthetic and poetic qualities of the key works of the four writers who form the central subject of the book -- Abd al-Malik Nuri (1921-98), Gha'ib Tu'ma Farman (1927-90), Mahdi Isa al-Saqr (1927-2006) and Fu'ad al-Takarli (1927-2008) -- all of whom began to write in or around the pivotal decade of the 1950s. It is in these writers' works that Iraqi fiction came of age and reached artistic maturity. The best of them are among the most complex portrayals of the particularities of life in Iraq and the human condition in general to come out of the Arab world.
The Postcolonial Unconscious by
The Postcolonial Unconscious is a major attempt to reconstruct the whole field of postcolonial studies. In this magisterial and, at times, polemical study, Neil Lazarus argues that the key critical concepts that form the very foundation of the field need to be re-assessed and questioned. Drawing on a vast range of literary sources, Lazarus investigates works and authors from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Arab world, South, Southeast and East Asia, to reconsider them from a postcolonial perspective. Alongside this, he offers bold new readings of some of the most influential figures in the field: Fredric Jameson, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon. A tour de force of postcolonial studies, this book will set the agenda for the future, probing how the field has come to develop in the directions it has and why and how it can grow further.
"The ultimate way: apocalypse and pluralism in the postcolonial fiction of Salman Rushdie and Shusaku Endo " in Apocalyptic Patterns in Twentieth-Century Fiction by
David J. Leigh explores the innovative influences of the Book of Revelation and ideas of an end time on fiction of the twentieth century, and probes philosophical, political, and theological issues raised by apocalyptic writers from Walker Percy, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams to Doris Lessing, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo. Leigh tackles head on a fundamental question about Christian-inspired eschatology: Does it sanction, as theologically sacred or philosophically ultimate, the kind of "last battles" between good and evil that provoke human beings to demonize and destroy the other? Against the backdrop of this question, Leigh examines twenty modern and postmodern apocalyptic novels, juxtaposing them in ways that expose a new understanding of each. The novels are clustered for analysis in chapters that follow seven basic eschatological patterns--the last days imagined as an ultimate journey, a cosmic battle, a transformed self, an ultimate challenge, the organic union of human and divine, the new heaven and new earth, and the ultimate way of religious pluralism. For religious novelists, these patterns point toward spiritual possibilities in the final days of human life or of the universe. For more political novelists--Ralph Ellison, Russell Hoban, and Salman Rushdie among them--the patterns are used to critique political or social movements of self-destruction. Beyond the twenty novels closely analyzed, Leigh makes pertinent reference to many more as well as to reflections from theologians Jürgen Moltmann, Zachary Hayes, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Paul Ricoeur. Both a guidebook and a critical assessment, Leigh's work brings theological concepts to bear on end-of-the-world fiction in an admirably clear and accessible manner. "In his new book, David J. Leigh uses an interdisciplinary lens to scrutinize the place of eschatology and apocalypse in literature. He mines a wonderfully diverse array of case studies--from science fiction, to fantasy, to postmodernism, to postcolonial genres--to find rich theological readings bearing on twentieth-century concerns." --Mark Bosco, S.J., Loyola University Chicago "David Leigh brings his impressive background in philosophy, theology, and literary theory to bear on twenty writers of the twentieth century who, through apocalyptic imagery and motifs, explore ultimate reality and end time. While painstakingly aware of the many differences among these writers, he convincingly argues that these texts use a variety of genres to embody in concrete and imaginative ways human experiences of ultimacy." --Philip Rule, S.J., Holy Cross College "David Leigh has made a major contribution to our understanding of the apocalyptic tradition in 20th century fiction. Along the way, Leigh introduces us to a remarkable array of fiction--from science fiction to literature of death, to specific African American works like Frederick Douglass's Narrative, Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man, and to examples from Post-Colonial fiction like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Shusaku Endo's Deep River. Leigh's work is required reading for students interested in connections between religion and literature." --John L. Mahoney, Rattigan Professor of English, Boston College