British Asian fiction Twenty-first-century voices

*Twenty-first century voices: British Asian Fiction* is the first text to focus solely on the writing of British writers of South Asian descent born or raised in Britain. Written in accessible prose, it offers original new readings of works by Salman Rushie, V. S. Naipaul, Hanif Kureishi, Ravinder Randhawa, Atima Srivastava, Meera Syal, Suhayl Saadi, Monica Ali, Hari Kunzru, Nadeem Aslam, Gautam Malkani, Niven Govinden, and Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal. Exploring the unique contribution of these writers, it positions their work within debates surrounding black British, diasporic, migrant, and postcolonial literature in order to foreground both the continuities and tensions embedded in their relationship to such terms, engaging in particular with the ways in which the texts of this ‘new’ generation have been denied their right to a distinctive theoretical framework through absorption into pre-existing frames of reference. Focusing on the rich diversity of contemporary British Asian experience, the book engages with themes including gender, national and religious identity, the reality of post-9/11 Britain, the post-ethnic self, urban belonging, generational difference and youth identities, as well as indicating how these writers manipulate genre and the novel form in support of their thematic concerns. Author-centred chapters and suggestions for discussion and further reading make this an ideal introductory text for students of British and postcolonial literature, which will also appeal to readers at all levels interested in the distinct contribution of British Asian culture to contemporary British fiction.

Sara Upstone is Lecturer in English Literature at Kingston University.