Contents: Preface and acknowledgements. The nation and the world: an introduction/Harish Trivedi. I. Nation and creation: 1. Vikram Seth: In conversation with Meenakshi Mukherjee and Shirley Chew. 2. The narrative that defines us/Austin Clarke. II. Nations in black and white: 3. The black savant and the dark princess/Homi K. Bhabha. 4. Borderless: empire, race, and the League of Nations/John Scheckter. 5. 'One Step on Australian Soil and You're History': Our Man K. and the White Australia Policy/Geoffrey V. Davis. 6. Disgraceful metafiction: intertextuality in the postcolony/Gerald Gaylard. 7. Shoring Up Britain: David Dabydeen's Oceanic sublime/John Clement Ball. III. Nations and empires: 8. Reading 1857: The Government Report and indigenous 'Narrative'/Sukeshi Kamra. 9. Decolonization and the Progressive Writers Association/Priyamvada Gopal. 10. Nation and nationhood in modern Sri Lankan Literature/Chelva Kanaganayakam. 11. The remains of Empire: the comic melancholy of Clive James/Bruce Bennett. 12. 'A Construction from Spare Parts': inventing national identity in Singapore/Eddie Tay. IV. Nations at play: 13. Theatrical representation and national identity in Fiji/Ian Gaskell. 14. Performing the nation: Dave Carson and the Bengali Babu/Poonam Trivedi. 15. Changing nations: British and Spanish postcolonial films/Isabel Santaolalla. 16. Cricket and West Indian Writing/Kathleen Firth. Notes on contributors. Index.
"The Nation Across the World examines the present state of the nation in a variety of political formations and cultural locations around the world--from smaller but no less complex nations such as Fiji, Singapore, and Trinidad, to larger former colonies such as Australia, India, Sri Lanka and South Africa, to former colonial powers such as Britain and Spain, and the one supernation of our day, the USA. In the process, a wide range of issues are explored, including colonialism, empire, race, language, ethnicity, resistance and rebellion, liberation, national self-fashioning and identity and post colonial migration and hybridity.
The nation is situated in relation to the sub-national and the local on the one hand and to cosmopolitan internationalism and world movements on the other. The book offers discussions not only of literary texts and intertexts but also of other cultural forms including stage performances, films, and the game of cricket.
The nineteen contributors to this volume have themselves lived and worked in many countries and come from all over the globe. They include the novelists Vikram Seth and Austin Clarke, and a group of internationally distinguished academics including Homi Bhabha.
The subject-matter of the book, ranging across many locations and themes, will appeal to students and scholars across disciplines including literature, history, political science and cultural studies." (jacket)
