Postcolonial Novel

Richard Lane, Malaspina University-College

"A highly useful text for students of postcolonial literature."Modern Philology “An accessible introduction for students ... thought-provoking discussions of some interesting works.”Helen Hayward, Times Literary Supplement"This is a learned, lucid and innovative book by one of the leading scholars in the field. At once a very useful resource for students and also a major contribution to scholarly thinking, it offers a refreshing new perspective on key postcolonial novels in English and the theoretical debates these texts have sparked. Lane’s rare talent for explaining complex theoretical concepts while preserving the inherent difficulty of these ideas is fully engaged here.The Postcolonial Novel is the best study of its kind to date in postcolonial studies."Deborah L. Madsen, University of Geneva"In The Postcolonial Novel, Richard J. Lane offers his readers wonderfully open and fresh readings of some of the most important works in the canon such as Palace of the Peacock, Things Fall Apart, Foe and Surfacing. With these readings he brings his theoretical expertise to bear in subterranean ways that illuminate the texts while foregrounding the pleasures and intricacies of their stories. Readers less experienced in postcolonial theory than Lane is will have no difficulty following his approach and they will, as I have, come away from this book convinced that, in large part, postcolonial theorists like Spivak, Bhabha, Said, Foucault and Genette developed their ideas in tandem with the creative writers or, indeed, in response to these novels."Sherrill Grace, University of British Columbia

• Preface and Acknowledgements vi 1. Introducing the Postcolonial Novel in English: Wilson Harris's Palace of the peacock 12. The Counter-canonical Novel: J.M. Coerzee's Foe and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea 183. Alternative Historiographies: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart 324. National Consciousness: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat 475. Interrogating subjectivity: Bessie Head's A Question of Power 596. Recoding Narrative: Margaret Atwood's Surfacing 717. The Rushdie Affair: Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses 838. The Optical Unconscious: Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things Conclusion: Ending with Joy Kogawa's Obasan and Phyllis Greenwood's An Interrupted Panorama 97Conclusion 109Notes 115Bibliography 133Index 144