1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910807104403321

Autore

Walder Dennis.

Titolo

Postcolonial nostalgias : writing, representation and memory / / Dennis Walder

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Routledge, , 2011

ISBN

1-136-89120-X

1-136-89121-8

1-282-89845-0

9786612898457

0-203-84038-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (215 p.)

Collana

Routledge research in postcolonial literatures ; ; 31

Disciplina

823/.91409353

Soggetti

Commonwealth fiction (English) - History and criticism

English fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Nostalgia in literature

Postcolonialism in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Book Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Preface and Acknowledgements; 1 Introduction: The Persistence of Nostalgia; 2 'How is it going, Mr Naipaul?': Remembering Postcolonial Identities; 3 'The Broken String': Remembering the Homeland; 4 'Alone in a Landscape': Remembering Doris Lessing's Africa; 5 Recalling the Hidden Ends of Empire; 6 Remembering 'Bitter Histories': From Achebe to Adichie; 7 Nostalgia for the Present; 8 Endnote; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

"This book offers an original and informed critique of a widespread yet often misunderstood condition -- nostalgia, a pervasive human emotion connecting people across national and historical as well as personal boundaries. Often seen as merely escapist, nostalgia also offers solace and self-understanding for those displaced by the larger movements of our time. Walder analyses the writings of some of those entangled in the aftermath of empire, tracing the hidden connections underlying their yearnings for a common identity and a homeland, and



their struggles to recover their histories. Through a series of comparative reflections upon the representation in literary and related cultural forms of memory, he shows how admitting the past into the present through nostalgia enables former colonial or diasporic subjects to gain a deeper understanding of the networks of power within which they are caught in the modern world and beyond which it may yet be possible to move. Considering authors as varied as V.S Naipaul, J.G. Ballard, Doris Lessing, W.G. Sebald, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, as well as versions of 'Bushman' song, Walder pursues the often wayward, ambiguous paths of nostalgia as it has been represented beyond, but also within, Europe, so as to identify some of those processes of communal and individual experience that constitute the present and, by implication, the future.</P>"--