The Postcolonial Novel

• A concise introduction to a core and popular area of literary studies.
• Provides extended case studies which survey and summarise key critical debates and as such are invaluable for teaching.
• Places the emphasis on the text first and theory second, thus providing a unique and much needed approach to postcolonial literature, which in the past has been maligned for being theory driven.
• Takes an historical approach, thus covering a good range of texts that have generated lots of critical discussion and evaluative materials.
• Written clearly for an undergraduate reader, with introductory overviews at the start of each chapter.

Preface and Acknowledgements vi

1. Introducing the Postcolonial Novel in English: Wilson Harris's Palace of the peacock 1

2. The Counter-canonical Novel: J.M. Coerzee's Foe and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea 18

3. Alternative Historiographies: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart 32

4. National Consciousness: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat 47

5. Interrogating subjectivity: Bessie Head's A Question of Power 59

6. Recoding Narrative: Margaret Atwood's Surfacing 71

7. The Rushdie Affair: Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses 83

8. 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 97

Conclusion 109

Notes 115

Bibliography 133

Index 144

"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

Richard Lane, Malaspina University-College The Postcolonial Novel provides a concise and invaluable introduction to the rise of postcolonial literatures in English through close readings of seminal novels. These novels which continue to generate debate long after publication and have influenced the ways in which we think about literature and literary studies provide an ideal entry point to the subject for students. Each main chapter begins with a helpful introductory overview, and then closely reads a key novel before moving on to examine the impact and significance of that particular text. The book as a whole works to introduce and explain the emergence of theoretical discourse from these close readings, drawing extensively upon leading indigenous and western critics and theorists. Students will be encouraged to use this book to debate a wide range of critical issues that have been generated by postcolonial literatures.

Richard J. Lane is Professor of English, Malaspina University-College, Canada