Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors

Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, the leading critical overview of colonial and postcolonial literary studies, is an ideal historical introduction to the field. Highly praised from the time of its first publication for its lucidity, breadth, and insight, the book has itself played a crucial part in founding and shaping this rapidly expanding field. Elleke Boehmer, an internationally renowned postcolonial critic, provides a broad contextualizing narrative about the unfolding of colonial and postcolonial writing in English. Illuminating close reading of texts by a wide variety of writers–from Kipling and Conrad through to Kincaid and Naipaul, from Ngugi to Bernadine Evaristo and Arundhati Roy–explicate key theoretical terms such as ‘subaltern; ‘colonial resistance;’ writing back; and’ hybridity. This revised tenth-anniversary edition includes new critiques of postcolonial women’s writing and migrant literatures, an expanded and richly annotated bibliography, and a full new chapter on postcolonialism today exploring keynote debates in the field relating to transnationalism, postcolonial ethics, and resistance.