Zones of instability literature, postcolonialism, and the nation - Szeman, Imre (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
Includes bibliographical references (p. [209]-235) and index
The politics of postcolonial nationalist literature -- The nation as problem and possibility -- Caribbean space : Lamming, Naipaul, and federation -- The novel after the nation : Nigeria after Biafra -- The persistence of the nation : literature and criticism in Canada -- National culture and globalization
"In Zones of Instability, Imre Szeman examines the complex relationship between literature and politics by exploring the production of nationalist literature in the former British empire. Taking as his case studies the regions of the British Caribbean, Nigeria, and Canada, Szeman analyzes the work of authors for whom the idea of the "nation" and literature are inexorably entwined, such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, and V.S. Naipaul. Szeman focuses on literature created in the two decades after World War II, decades in which the future prospects for many newly independent former colonies went from extreme political optimism to often bitter political disappointment. He argues that "nation" can be read as that space in which literature is thought to be able to reunite two things that history has separated - the writer and the people."--Jacket