Maria Olaussen

Tina Steiner

This edited volume provides a wide- ranging introduction to the novelistic oeuvre of the prize- winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah. It addresses a gap in Gurnah scholarship by including chapters which discuss his earlier works that have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Drawing on a range of critical lenses including postcolonial theory, Indian Ocean studies, psychoanalytic theory, migration studies and gender studies, this book provides illuminating commentary on his novels. Attentive to the geographical and historical reach of the narratives, the chapters engage with recurring thematic concerns of departures and arrivals; of complex family relationships; and of precarious cosmopolitan hospitality in situations of changing power relations from the old Indian Ocean monsoon trading system to colonial and postcolonial contexts. The volume concludes with an author interview. It will be of great interest to researchers in the fields of Literary and Cultural Studies, especially Postcolonial Literature, African Studies and Indian Ocean Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of English Studies in Africa.

Critical Perspectives on Abdulrazak Gurnah

Three Types of Feminist Criticism and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

Discusses Rhys's novel in the context of black and white feminity and the contrasting roles and expectations of white and black women. Article contrasts life in the matriarchal Caribbean with life in patriarchcal Britain, as reflected in Antoinette and Rochester's relationship. Examines the influences in Rhys's life and her motivations for writing 'Wide Sargasso Sea' and the elements of her own life that are reflected in Antoinette's story.

Jean Rhys' construction of blackness as escape from white feminity in "Wide Sargasso Sea" [article].

Christina Angelfors

Africa Writing Europe offers critical readings of the meaning and presence of Europe in a variety of African literary texts. The first of its kind, it shifts the focus from questions of African identity to readings which delineate ideas of Europe also in texts written specifically in an African context. It seeks to place the representations of Europe in an historical context by including a number of different and often conflicting definitions of the Africa–Europe opposition, definitions that are traced to differences between the specific geographical and cultural locations both in the African and in the European context, including an Eastern European perspective as well as the metropolitan centres of Britain and France.The readings engage with the legacy of white domination manifested as slavery, colonialism, and apartheid as well as with the entangled histories and new perspectives developed through exile, both as voluntary and as forced migration. Several essays address the gendered dimension of the Africa–Europe opposition and relate it to other intersecting oppositions, such as the rural and the urban, the private and the public, in their analysis of representations of femininity and masculinity in the literary texts.The contributors to this volume come from different national backgrounds and share in examining the question of Europe in African literature. Authors discussed include Leila Aboulela, Tatamkhulu Afrika, Alice Solomon Bowen, Ken Bugul, Marie Cardinal, Eric Ngalle Charles, Yvette Christiansë, Soleïman Adel Guémar, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Dan Jacobson, Njabulo Ndebele, Femi Osofisan, Rebekah F., and Tayeb Salih.

Maria Olaussen

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