A01=Michael Gorra
Author_Michael Gorra
authority
binary
british
Category=DNL
Category=DSBH
Category=DSK
Category=JBCC
Category=NHTQ
Category=NHTR
colonialism
control
decolonization
diaspora
difference
domestic
empire
england
englishness
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
history
identity
imperialism
india
language
literature
midnights children
migrant
mimicry
multiracial
nationalism
nationality
nonfiction
novels
paul scott
politics
power
race
raj quartet
salman rushdie
satanic verses
social change
vs naipaul
Product details
- ISBN 9780226304755
- Weight: 284g
- Dimensions: 14 x 22mm
- Publication Date: 15 Mar 1997
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This study explores the ways in which three novelists of empire - Paul Scott, V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie - have charted the perpetually drawn and perpetually blurred boundaries of identity in the wake of British imperialism. Arguing against a model of cultural identity based on race, Gorra begins with Scott's portrait, in "The Raj Quartet", of the character Hari Kumar - a seeming oxymoron, an "English boy with a dark brown skin", whose very existence undercuts the belief in an absolute distinction between England and India. He then considers the different figures of Naipaul and Rushdie, two novelists of the Indian diaspora. Whereas Naipaul's long and controversial career is said to map the "deep disorder" spread by imperialism and its passing, Rushdie demonstrates that certain consequences of that disorder, such as migrancy and mimicry, have themselves become creative forces. The readings of postcolonial fiction included in this study demonstrate how imperialism helped shape British national identity, and how, after the end of empire, that identity must be reconfigured.
