Postcolonial Literary Geographies

John Thieme is Senior Fellow at the University of East Anglia, UK. He previously held Chairs at the University of Hull and London South Bank University, and has also taught at the Universities of Guyana and North London. His books include Post-Colonial Con-Texts: Writing Back to the Canon, Post-Colonial Studies: The Essential Glossary and monographs on Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul and R.K. Narayan.

This book examines how ideas about place and space have been transformed in recent decades. It offers a unique understanding of the ways in which postcolonial writers have contested views of place as fixed and unchanging and are remapping conceptions of world geography, with chapters on cartography, botany and gardens, spice, ecologies, animals and zoos, and cities, as well as reference to the importance of archaeology and travel in such debates. Writers whose work receives detailed attention include Amitav Ghosh, Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid, Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje and Robert Kroetsch. Challenging both older colonial and more recent global constructions of place, the book argues for an environmental politics that is attentive to the concerns of disadvantaged peoples, animal rights and ecological issues. Its range and insights make it essential reading for anyone interested in the changing physical and human geography of the contemporary world.

Examines the work of a wide range of key postcolonial authors

Acknowledgements.- 1. Introduction: Exploring Space, Excavating Place.- 2. Postcolonial Mappae Mundi.- 3. After the Bounty: Botany and Botanical Tropes.- 4. 'Lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon': Romantic Spice, Postcolonial Spice.- 5. Inheriting the Earth: Postcolonial Ecologies.- 6. Paper Tigers and Other Therianthropes.- 7. Urban Chronotopes: London and Bombay.- 8.Travelling Places: A Coda.- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index.-