Postcolonial Literature

What is 'postcolonial literature' and what is its appeal? What is the purpose of writing literature about the aftermath of colonization and the independence of colonial nations? This Guide presents new access routes into the key questions and debates surrounding the genre and offers innovative ways of thinking critically about postcolonial literature. Justin D. Edwards: analyses the criticism surrounding English-language literature from the major regions and countries of the postcolonial world, such as South Africa, Nigeria, the Caribbean, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and Sri Lanka, includes a discussion of native American writing and African American literature, as well as of Irish and Scottish liberationist texts, examines criticism on works by key writers, such as Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and Jamaica Kincaid, explores the themes, concepts and theoretical approaches that are vital to an understanding of postcolonial literature and the development of criticism of the genre. Lucid and stimulating, this is an invaluable introduction to one of the most exciting, and fastest growing, fields in contemporary English literary studies. Book jacket.

JUSTIN EDWARDS is currently Research Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. He was previously Associate Professor of English at the University of Copenhagen and, from July 2006, he will be Professor of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century English Literature at the University of Wales, Bangor. He has published widely on Canadian and American literature and travel writing.