This book provides a unique account of Walcott's development as a writer in addition to being the fullest study of his poetry and plays to date.
Discusses all his major works and includes information on his out-of-print and unpublished plays along with .

An illuminating study of one of the best-selling, most widely studied black authors today. Explains Morrison's relation to the American civil rights and Black Consciousness movements. Places Morrison in a political and historical context .

This is the first full-length study of Alice Munro's work to be published in Britain. Highlights Munro's distinctive storytelling methods where everything becomes both 'touchable and mysterious'.

Ngugi is one of the most important novelists on the contemporary world stage, and someone whose name has for many become synonymous with cultural controversy and political struggle.
Patrick William's lucid analysis offers the most up-to-date study of Ngugi's writing, including his most rcent collection of essays. Focusing on important aspects of Ngugi's work which critics have hitherto ignored, and drawing on a wide range of relevant theoretical perspectives, this study examines the growing complexity of Ngugi's accounts of the history of colonised and post-colonial Kenya. The cultural...

Les Murray is amongst the most gifted poets writing today, his multi-faceted talents have received high praise both in his native Australia and beyond. But he has also proved a controversial figure, whose poetry strays across the boundaries of political and cultural debate. The only full critical study of Murray's work available, Steven Matthews provides a complete picture of his career to date, from its early parables of national emergence to the working man's epic encounter with the major events of the twentieth century, Fredy Neptune. Provides detailed readings of key poems, as well as...

The first book-length study of one of Britain's most successful young writers. His work in a range of genres, from drama to film, fiction and short stories, has elicited widespread critical acclaim and - at times - provoked sharp condemnation. Provides a detailed account of his work to date, from Kureishi's early involvement in 'fringe' theatre (an area generally ignored hitherto), to the short story collections. Locates Kureishi's work securely in its historical, social, cultural and critical contexts, as well as providing detailed readings of all the major works. Kureishi is an important...

R.K. Narayan's reputation as one of the founding figures of Indian writing in English is re-examined in this comprehensive study of his fiction. Arguing against views that have seen Narayan as a chronicler of authentic "Indianness," John Thieme locates his fiction in terms of specific South Indian contexts, cultural geography, and non-Indian intertexts. Thieme draws on recent thinking about the ways places are constructed to demonstrate that Malgudi is always a fractured and transitional site--an interface between older conceptions and contemporary views that stress the inescapability of...

This is the most comprehensive study to date of Amy Tan's work. It offers close readings of her texts in the context of broader debates about the representation of identity, history and reality.
In contrast with Tan's own American-born narrators, and mainstream critics, Bella Adams's study looks beyond the stereotypes which appear in Tan's books, and explores the ways in which Chinese immigrants and their American relatives struggle to understand each others 'best qualities' via the Chinese tradition of the 'talk story'. She emphasises Tan's American narrators' process of becoming Chinese...

Since the publication of The Woman Warrior in 1976, Maxine Hong Kingston has gained a reputation as one of the most popular -- and controversial -- writers in the Asian American literary tradition. In this volume Grice traces Kingston's development as a writer and cultural activist through both ethnic and feminist discourses, investigating her novels, occasional writings and her two-book 'life-writing project'.
The publication of The Woman Warrior not only propelled Kingston into the mainstream literary limelight, but also precipitated a vicious and ongoing controversy in Asian American...

The award-winning novelist Rohinton Mistry is recognised as one of the most important contemporary writers of postcolonial literature. This study - the first of its kind - will provide scholars and students with an insight into the key features of Mistry's work. Peter Morey suggests how the author's writing can be read in terms of recent Indian political history, his native Zoroastrian culture and ethos, conventions of oral storytellling common to Persia and South Asia, and the experience of migration which now sees him living in Canada. The texts are viewed through the lens of diaspora and...