Book History Through Postcolonial Eyes: Rewriting the Script

This surprising study draws together the disparate fields of postcolonial theory and book history in a challenging and illuminating way. Robert Fraser proposes that we now look beyond the traditional methods of the Anglo-European bibliographic paradigm, and learn to appreciate instead the diversity of shapes that verbal expression has assumed across different societies. This change of attitude will encourage students and researchers to question developmentally conceived models of communication, and move instead to a re-formulation of just what is meant by a book, an author, a text. Fraser illustrates his combined approach with comparative case studies of print, script and speech cultures in South Asia and Africa, before panning out to examine conflicts and paradoxes arising in parallel contexts. The re-orientation of approach and the freshness of view offered by this volume will foster understanding and creative collaboration between scholars of different outlooks, while offering a radical critique to thoseidentified in its concluding section as purveyors of global literary power.

Robert Fraser is co-editor with Mary Hammond of the two-volume Books Without Borders (2008), and also enjoys a parallel career as a biographer. Professor of English at the Open University, he is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Asiatic Society