This book provides an introduction to postcolonial literatures by uncovering their historical, political, cultural and linguistic contexts. It tracks the growth of British mercantile/colonial expansion and consolidation not only through the era of high imperialism, rapid colonisation and the mid-twentieth-century collapse of the empire, but also through the nascent neocolonialism and globalising forces of the twenty-first century. Sarkar reads literature both related to British imperialism and written in opposition to it, produced at both the metropolitan centre and in the colonies.

Parama Sarkar teaches at the Department of English Language and Literature, University of Toledo, Ohio, USA.