Rather than lamenting that postcolonial writers 'sell out' to multinational corporate publishing, parading their exotic otherness to metropolitan audiences, Sarah Brouillette assesses how they respond to their own reception and niche positioning within a global marketplace that has faced staunch political critique. Combining analysis of recent postcolonial texts with detailed accounts of authors' careers and the global trade in literature, this book is an exciting contribution to globalization studies and the emerging history of the postcolonial book.

This book contends that mainstream considerations of the economic and social force of culture, including theories of the creative class and of cognitive and immaterial labor, are indebted to historic conceptions of the art of literary authorship. It shows how contemporary literature has been involved in and has responded to creative-economy phenomena, including the presentation of artists as models of contentedly flexible and self-managed work, the treatment of training in and exposure to art as a pathway to social inclusion, the use of culture and cultural institutions to increase property...