| Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging Contributor(s): Phillips, Caryl (Author) |
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ISBN: 0679781544 ISBN-13: 9780679781547 Publisher: Vintage OUR PRICE: $16.10 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: December 1998 Annotation: Extravagant Strangers is renowned author Caryl Phillips's very personal response to the popular idea that "outsiders" in Britain are currently reinvigorating the literary canon. Phillips shows that in fact English literature has never been homogenous: it has been shaped and influenced by outsiders for at least two hundred years. Included in Extravagant Strangers are slave writers, such as Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho; Britons born in the colonies, such as Thackeray, Kipling, and Orwell; "subject writers", such as C.L.R. James and V. S. Naipaul; and "postcolonial" observers of Britain, such as Ben Okri, Salman Rushdie, Timothy Mo, and Anita Desai. With this eloquent and often inspiring collection, Caryl Phillips proves, if proof be needed, that the greatest literature is often born out of irreconcilable tensions between a writer and his or her society. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Anthologies (multiple Authors) - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Dewey: 820.9 |
| LCCN: 98029751 |
| Series: Vintage International |
| Physical Information: 0.75" H x 5.18" W x 8.01" (0.59 lbs) 336 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Shakespeare called Othello an extravagant and wheeling stranger/Of here and every where. In this exciting anthology, Caryl Phillips has collected writings by thirty-nine extravagant strangers: British writers who were born outside of Britain and see it with clear and critical eyes. These eloquent and incisive voices prove that English literature, far from being pure or homogenous, has in fact been shaped and influenced by outsiders for over two hundred years. Here are slave writers, such as Ignatius Sancho, an eightieth century African who became a friend to Samuel Johnson and Laurence Sterne; writers born in the colonies such as Thackeray, Kipling, and Orwell; subject writers, such as C.L.R. James and V.S. Naipaul; foreign migr s, such as Joseph Conrad and Kazuo Ishiguro; and postcolonial observers of the British scene, such as Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, and Anita Desai. With the eloquent and often inspiring collection, Phillips proves, if proof be needed, that the greatest literature is often born out of irreconcilable tensions between a writer and his or her society. |