Taking an innovative and multi-disciplinary approach to literature from 1947 to the present day, this concise companion is an indispensable guide for anyone seeking an authoritative understanding of the intellectual contexts of postcolonial literature and culture.

* An indispensable guide for anyone seeking an authoritative understanding of the intellectual contexts of Postcolonialism, bringing together 10 original essays from leading international scholars including C. L. Innes and Susan Bassnett

* Explains the ideas and practises that emerged from the dismantling of European empires

* Explores the ways in which these ideas and practices influenced the period’s keynote concerns, such as race, culture, and identity; literary and cultural translations; and the politics of resistance

* Chapters cover the fields of identity studies, orality and literacy, nationalisms, feminism, anthropology and cultural criticism, the politics of rewriting, new geographies, publishing and marketing, translation studies.

* Features a useful Chronology of the period, thorough general bibliography, and guides to further reading.

From the Back Cover

This Concise Companion offers an innovative, multi-disciplinary approach to Postcolonial literatures and cultures from 1947 to the present.

In a series of original essays, leading international scholars, including C.L.Innes and Susan Bassnett, seek to explore and explain the ideas and practices that have emerged from the dismantling of European empires, and the impact that these have had on Postcolonial literatures and cultures. This authoritative Companion investigates the key concerns of literature of this period, such as race, culture, and identity; literary and cultural translations; and the politics of resistance. Individual chapters focus on a broad-range of subjects such as identity studies, orality and literacy, nationalisms, feminism, anthropology and cultural criticism, the politics of rewriting, new geographies, publishing and marketing, translation studies.

A Concise Companion to Postcolonial Literature is an indispensable guide for anyone seeking an authoritative understanding of the intellectual contexts of Postcolonialism.

About the Author

Shirley Chew is Emeritus Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Leeds. She has published widely in the field of Postcolonial literatures including the co-edited Unbecoming Daughters of the Empire (1993), Translating Life: Studies in Transpositional Aesthetics (1999) and Reconstructing the Book: Literary Texts in Transmission (2001). From 1992-1996 she co-edited The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. She is the founding editor Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writing.

David Richards is Professor of English Studies and Director of the Centre of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Stirling having previously held posts at the universities of Leeds and Birmingham and at the Open University, where he was the founding Director of the Ferguson Research Centre. His published works include Masks of Difference: Cultural Representations in Literature, Anthropology and Art (1995) and Urban Generations: Post-colonial Cities (Co-edited with Taieb Balghazi and Taoufik Agoumy, 2005).