In this outstanding collection of essays, editors Neil Murphy and
Wai-chew Sim seek not so much to demarcate the field of British
Asian fiction, but to offer due acknowledgment of the artistic
merit of the works of selected authors and simultaneously register
their cultural significance. This volume demonstrates in situ the
virtues of commentary that engages in a substantial manner with
formal and aesthetic considerations, even as it implicates the
discourses of alterity that dominate contemporary cultural
criticism. Additionally, the essays delineate the complex subject
positions explored by authors and texts, and focus on the way
writers negotiate the exigencies of their location within and
between different social formations. If it is the case that British
literature can no longer be discussed in monocultural terms because
of the impact of the writers under consideration, it is also the
case that the diverse trans-cultural positions they explore are
often less specified than proclaimed. Addressing difference,
commensurability, and form-related notions of truth-content, these
essays enlarge our understanding of the range of British (and
affiliated) identities, as well as the cultural contexts from which
they arose. Working as academics and critics from Singapore, a
useful vantage point, Murphy and Sim have extended the parameters
of British Asian to include, not just writers from South Asia as is
traditionally the case, but writers whose parents, or who
themselves, have migrated to Britain from other regions of Asia,
for example, Japan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. This initiative has
made it possible for professors Murphy and Sim to bring together,
first, an interestingly varied group of authors, among them those
who came to prominence in the 1980s Salman Rushdie, Timothy Mo,
Kazuo Ishiguro as well as their younger contemporaries Meera Syal,
Romesh Gunesekera, Monica Ali, Hari Kunzru, Ooi Yang-May; and,
second, a broad and diverse range of novels that span Timothy Mo s
Sour Sweet (1982) and Tariq Ali s A Sultan in Palermo (2005), the
fourth volume in his Islam quintet.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(2)
(4)
