Postcolonial Nostalgias

Dennis Walder is Professor of Literature at the Open University. His publications include Dickens and Religion, Athol Fugard (whose work he has also edited), Post-Colonial Literatures in English, and the bestselling reader Literature in the Modern World.

• Preface and Acknowledgments 1: Introductory: The Persistence of Nostalgia 2: ‘How is it going Mr Naipaul?’: Remembering Postcolonial Identites 3: ‘The Broken String’: Remembering the Homeland 4: ‘Alone in a Landscape’: Remembering Doris Lessing’s Africa 5: Recalling the Hidden Ends of Empire: W.G. Sebald 6: Remembering ‘bitter histories’: From Achebe to Adichie 7: Nostalgia for the Present: J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun Endnote Notes Bibliography Index

"Postcolonial Nostalgias is an ambitious and riveting work of literary criticism, spanning more than a century of realistic writing and thematically connecting postcolonial representations of Trinidad/West Indies, the Islamic World, India, Japan England, South Africa, Germany, Nigeria, and China – historically, psychologically, and aesthetically…the indisputable scholarly value rest[s] on its author’s wide knowledge of contemporary literature, expert command of history, impressive handling of theory, and delightfully readable prose." –R. Victoria Arana, Howard University, College Literature" richly resourceful and insightful." --Ashok K Mohapatra, Sambalpur University, Postcolonial Text"Dennis Walder’s study is refreshingly different. Not only does it exhort a re-evaluation of the critical and reflective functions of nostalgic memory, but places this enterprise within a literary and historical framework that goes beyond typical postcolonial fare." --Journal of Postcolonial Writing