Postcolonial Gothic Fictions from the Caribbean, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

This book explores Postcolonial Gothic in four different locations, providing a comparative analysis of the way the Gothic has provided postcolonial writers with a means to express the anxieties of postcolonial experience and the traumatic legacies of colonialism, expressed through novels, short stories and poetry. Most of the texts examined are contemporary, including those by Derek Walcott, Shani Mootoo, Margaret Atwood, Peter Carey and Keri Hulme. The book provides a timely addition to the study of the postcolonial. Popular forms in relation to the postcolonial have been a relatively neglected area of study and this is particularly true of the Gothic, despite its prevalence in postcolonial literature. The book contains six chapters: an introduction and theoretical overview, conclusion, and chapters on Caribbean Gothic, Canadian Gothic, Australian Gothic and New Zealand Gothic, to provide an overview of the Gothic in the national or regional context, placing the emphasis on the postcolonial and focusing on the way the Gothic is utilised by white settlers and indigenous people in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, by the descendents of people forcibly mobilised through slavery in the Caribbean, and by other more recent migrants to, or between these locations.