Reading Across Worlds Transnational Book Groups and the Reception of Difference

Moving between the worlds of professional (academic) and lay readers (book groups), between metropolitan and non-metropolitan audiences, between the imagined worlds of fiction and the real worlds of reading, and between the locations of England, Scotland, Canada, the Caribbean, India and Africa, Reading Across Worlds draws otherwise distant readerships into conversation. Combining sustained empirical analysis of reading group conversations with four case studies of classic and contemporary novels: Things Fall Apart, White Teeth, Brick Lane and Small Island, the book pursues what can be gained through a comparative approach to reading and readerships.
This is a book about how readers beyond the academy talk about, use and make sense of a literature that publishers and bookstores, the press and professional critics, have variously labelled 'multicultural', 'international', 'diasporic', 'cosmopolitan', 'global', 'postcolonial', 'Third World', or more recently, 'World'.

James Procter is a Reader in the School of English at Newcastle University, UK. His publications include Writing Black Britain (2000), Dwelling Places (2003), Stuart Hall (2004), and (with Benwell and Robinson) co-editor of Postcolonial Audiences (2012).

Bethan Benwell is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Literature and Languages at the University of Stirling, UK. She has published widely on discursive approaches to identity, including those of readers. Her publications include Masculinity and Men's Lifestyle Magazines (2003) and (with Stokoe) Discourse and Identity (2006) and (with Procter and Robinson) co-editor of Postcolonial Audiences (2012).

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Transcription Key
Notes on Book Groups
1. Introduction
2. Professional and Lay Readers
3. Remote Reading
4. Reading and Realism
5. Reading in the Literary Market Place
6. Reading as a Social Practice – Race Talk
Appendices
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index