This book articles presents new scholarship on the subject of imperial expansion through colonization and globalization from a variety of postcolonial perspectives. The essays in this volume, grouped in three chapters, scrutinize imperial expansion within the context of national identities and imageries-deconstructing the modernist and utopian idea of a nation as a site of homogeneity, and reviewing the importance of the concept in the different phases of colonization. Hence the first chapter is entitled 'Neo-Imperial Traces or Premonitions in Modernism.' The post-classical phase of colonialism is examined through the representation of the colonized and the once-colonized. Applying postcolonial theories and often moving beyond them, scholars scrutinize such textual and filmic representations as exemplified in Asia. These make up Chapter Two, 'Interference of the Imperial Tradition in Asia, ' which allows for the re-articulations of cultural heritage in the region within the different and ever renewed schemes of imperial expansion. Chapter Three, 'Reformulations of the Imperial Project, ' seeks to explore the questions surrounding inclusion in and exclusion from the realm of power as the founding principle of empire, suggesting that they are discursive and deliberate. Postcolonial societies inherit the trauma of colonialism that subjected people to a cultural displacement that is exacerbated by renewed efforts of imperial influence through globalizatio

Paris in the spring of 1968. The city is beginning to emerge from hibernation and an obscure spirit of social and political renewal is in the air. Yet Théo, his twin sister Isabelle and Matthew, an American student they have befriended, think only of immersing themselves in another, addictive form of hibernation: moviegoing at the Cinémathèque Française. Night after night, they take their place beside their fellow cinephiles in the very front row of the stalls and feast insatiably off the images that flicker across the vast white screen. Denied their nightly 'fix' when the French government suddenly orders the Cinémathèque's closure, Théo, Isabelle and Matthew gradually withdraw into a hermetically sealed universe of their own creation, an airless universe of obsessive private games, ordeals, humiliations and sexual jousting which finds them shedding their clothes and their inhibitions with equal abandon. A vertiginous free fall interrupted only, and tragically, when the real world outside their shuttered apartment succeeds at last in encroaching on their delirium. The study of a triangular relationship whose perverse eroticism contrives nevertheless to conserve its own bruised purity, brilliant in its narrative invention and startling in its imagery, The Dreamers (now a major film by Bernardo Bertolucci) belongs to the romantic French tradition of Les Enfants Terribles and Le Grand Meaulnes and resembles no other work in recent British fiction.

Anton Vowl is missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, a group of his faithful companions trawl through his diary for any hint as to his location and, insidiously, a ghost, from Vowl's past starts to cast its malignant shadow. This virtuoso story, chock-full of plots and subplots, shows the skill of both author and translator who impart all the action without a crucial grammatical prop: the letter 'e'.

Rickie Elliot, a sensitive and intelligent young man with an intense imagination and a certain amount of literary talent, sets out from Cambridge full of hopes to become a writer. But when his stories are not successful he decides instead to marry the beautiful but shallow Agnes, agreeing to abandon his writing and become a schoolmaster at a second-rate public school. Giving up his hopes and values for those of the conventional world, he sinks into a world of petty conformity and bitter disappointments.

Lewis Carroll's stories of Alice have entranced children - and grown-ups - for nearly 150 years. And more than one reader, turning the last page of "Through the Looking-Glass," must have been saddened by the thought that her adventures had well and truly come to an end. Not so Setting himself the daily task of believing "as many as six impossible things before breakfast" (or at least before lunch), Gilbert Adair has written a delightful successor to Carroll's two immortal fantasies. Here, with the aid of Jenny Thorne's Tenniel-inspired illustrations, you will find characters as nonsensical as any ever encountered by Alice. The Siamese-Twin Cats joined at the tail, the kindly old Grampus and its Auto-Biography, the Welsh Rabbit with its toasted cheese and Worcestershire Sauce and many, many, more. And perhaps you too will gradually discover, as Alice does, the mysterious pattern which shapes the destiny of her dream. "Alice Through the Needle's Eye" is both a literary tour de force and an enchantingly funny tail for children of, as they say, all ages.

One of the earliest examples of the classic murder mystery, Hoffman's remarkable book has been the inspiration for a host of thriller and crime writers. Parisian goldsmith Monsieur Cardillac is a genius at his craft. Greatly admired throughout Paris, he is renowned for his works of exquisite and matchless beauty. So much so, that it seems the desire to possess his creations is enough to lead to murder. Composer, writer, and painter E.T.A. Hoffmann is an important figure in the German Romantic movement; he is perhaps best known as the author of "The Nutcracker."

A painter who became a novelist, Theophile Gautier formulated the notion of "art for art's sake." In this literary gem, the gaze is the central character as the eye of the beholder turns deadly. Paul d' Aspremont, on holiday in Italy, meets his fiancee in all but name, a young English girl named Alicia Ward. What begins as an urbane and courtly affair descends into a Gothic nightmare as Paul is revealed to possess the "evil eye," a jinx that kills all those he befriends. Novelist, poet, and critic, Theophile Gautier was a key figure in the Romantic movement in France.