Soul Tourists

Author: Bernardine Evaristo
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141903813
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Book Description
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER 'Evaristo possesses enough ball-busting originality to create whole novels for each of the historical characters she resurrects . . . [she creates] funky yarns so tantalising you want to devour them' Guardian Meet Stanley Williams: Single, in his thirties, grieving the death of his Jamaican father and wondering if there is more to life than his nine-to-five banking job in a sky-high glass menagerie. Enter Jessie O'Donnell: barmaid, former singer-cum-comedienne, and desperate to get into her rusty old Lady Niva and hit the freeway across Europe. The unlikely pair begin an electrifying odyssey that weaves in and out of history, colliding with the forgotten heroes of Europe's past. Shakespeare's mysterious 'Dark Lady of the Sonnet's, Pushkin and his Ethiopian great-grandfather and the mixed-race Allessandro de' Medici of Florence are all ready to have their voices heard, and Stanley and Jessie do what they can to hang on for the ride . . . 'A bouncy. . . touching novel about the search for love and belonging' The Times

Soul Tourists

Author: Bernardine Evaristo
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0140297820
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Book Description
Stanley Williams, angst-ridden banker and boffin, wonders whether there's more to life than his daily nine-to-five grind. One night he's dragged to a disco at Piccadilly Circus and there he meets Jessie: artiste, motormouth, ducker and diver. She swoops Stanley out of his soulless life and off on a rollercoaster road trip across Europe, bringing him face to face with a host of forgotten luminaries from the rich mix of black European history and literature.

Coping with Difference

Author: Sabine Nunius
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 3643101597
Category : Cultural pluralism in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Has British literature finally surpassed Postmodernism and are we thus currently witnessing the emergence of a new era? Choosing specific forms of engagement with difference as a starting point, the present study traces recent developments in the field of the novel and illustrates in how far these new ways of dealing with difference may be characterised as "non-postmodern". Moreover, the analysis aims to demonstrate the renewed importance of modern(ist) strategies and their employment in contemporary British fiction. Case studies of six novels complement and illuminate these findings.

Fiction Unbound

Author: Sebnem Toplu
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443832693
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 95

Book Description
This book covers all Bernardine Evaristo’s major works: Lara (1997) and Lara (2009), The Emperor’s Babe, Soul Tourists, Blonde Roots and Hello Mum. Each chapter focuses on a particular novel, combining a close analysis of the author’s technique with a penetrating understanding of the basic themes which underlie all of Evaristo’s work. This monograph exposes that Evaristo is not simply interested in “multicultural” issues; to label them as such is to overlook her achievement as a novelist. It shows instead how Evaristo combines apparently disparate elements—for example, historical research with late-twentieth century allusions in a narrative such as The Emperor’s Babe—to show how African-Caribbeans have been coming to Britain for thousands of years. Yet Evaristo is not just interested in the African-Caribbean experience; this book shows how she tries to question those basic concepts—for example “Englishness” or “patriotism”—which lie at the heart of mainstream white culture in contemporary Britain. It argues that Evaristo is interested in alternative constructions—not only of nationalism, but of other basic issues such as race, gender and class. Her books give the chance for hitherto marginalized characters—slaves, women, or victims of a patriarchal world—to tell their stories and postulate alternative views of the world they live in. Above all, this monograph shows how Evaristo refuses to be pigeon-holed; she is not simply “a black British writer,” but someone who focuses on the interconnectedness of society. This book calls for readers to adopt a more enlightened approach, not only to issues of culture and identity, but to the work of Evaristo as a whole.

Literary Form as Postcolonial Critique

Author: Katharine Burkitt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317104617
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
Focusing on works by Derek Walcott, Les Murray, Anne Carson, and Bernardine Evaristo, Katharine Burkitt investigates the relationship between literary form and textual politics in postcolonial narrative poems and verse-novels. Burkitt argues that these works disrupt and undermine the traditions of particular forms and genres, and most notably the expectations attached to the prose novel, poetry, and epic. This subversion of form, Burkitt argues, is an important aspect of the texts' postcoloniality as they locate themselves critically in relation to literary convention, and they are all concerned with matters of social, racial, and national identities in a world where these categories are inherently complicated. In addition, the awareness of epic tradition in these texts unites them as 'post-epics', in that as they reuse the myths and motifs of a variety of epics, they question the status of the form, demonstrate it to be inherently malleable, and regenerate its stories for the contemporary world. As she examines the ways in which postcolonial texts rewrite the traditions of classical epics for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Burkitt ties close textual analysis to a critical intervention in the politics of form.

Uncommon Wealths in Postcolonial Fiction

Author: Helga Ramsey-Kurz
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004359583
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Book Description
Uncommon Wealths in Postcolonial Fiction engages urgently with wealth, testing current assumptions of inequality in order to push beyond reductive contemporary readings of the gaping abyss between rich and poor. Shifting away from longstanding debates in postcolonial criticism focused on poverty and abjection, the book marshals fresh perspectives on material, spiritual, and cultural prosperity as found in the literatures of formerly colonized spaces. The chapters ‘follow the money’ to illuminate postcolonial fiction’s awareness of the ambiguities of ‘wealth’, acquired under colonial capitalism and transmuted in contemporary neoliberalism. They weigh idealistic projections of individual and collective wellbeing against the stark realities of capital accumulation and excessive consumption. They remain alert to the polysemy suggested by “Uncommon Wealths,” both registering the imperial economic urge to ensure common wealth and referencing the unconventional or non-Western, the unusual, even fictitious and contrasting privately coveted and exclusively owned wealth with visions of a shared good. Arranged into four sections centred on aesthetics, injustice, indigeneity, and cultural location, the individual chapters show how writers of postcolonial fiction, including Aravind Adiga, Amit Chau-dhuri, Anita Desai, Patricia Grace, Mohsin Hamid, Stanley Gazemba, Tomson Highway, Lebogang Matseke, Zakes Mda, Michael Ondaatje, Kim Scott, and Alexis Wright, employ prosperity and affluence as a lens through which to re-examine issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and family, the cultural value of heritage, land, and social cohesion, and such conflicting imperatives as economic growth, individual fulfilment, social and environmental responsibility, and just distribution. CONTRIBUTORS Francesco Cattani, Sheila Collingwood–Whittick, Paola Della Valle, Sneja Gunew, Melissa Kennedy, Neil Lazarus, John McLeod, Eva–Maria Müller, Helga Ramsey–Kurz, Geoff Rodoreda, Sandhya Shetty, Cheryl Stobie, Helen Tiffin, Alex Nelungo Wanjala, David Waterman

Manifesto

Author: Bernardine Evaristo
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802158919
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 159

Book Description
From the bestselling and Booker Prize–winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo's memoir of her own life and writing, and her manifesto on unstoppability, creativity, and activism Bernardine Evaristo's 2019 Booker Prize win was an historic and revolutionary occasion, with Evaristo being the first Black woman and first Black British person ever to win the prize in its fifty-year history. Girl, Woman, Other was named a favorite book of the year by President Obama and Roxane Gay, was translated into thirty-five languages, and has now reached more than a million readers. Evaristo's astonishing nonfiction debut, Manifesto, is a vibrant and inspirational account of Evaristo's life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought over several decades to bring her creative work into the world. With her characteristic humor, Evaristo describes her childhood as one of eight siblings, with a Nigerian father and white Catholic mother, tells the story of how she helped set up Britain's first Black women's theatre company, remembers the queer relationships of her twenties, and recounts her determination to write books that were absent in the literary world around her. She provides a hugely powerful perspective to contemporary conversations around race, class, feminism, sexuality, and aging. She reminds us of how far we have come, and how far we still have to go. In Manifesto, Evaristo charts her theory of unstoppability, showing creative people how they too can visualize and find success in their work, ignoring the naysayers. Both unconventional memoir and inspirational text, Manifesto is a unique reminder to us all to persist in doing work we believe in, even when we might feel overlooked or discounted. Evaristo shows us how we too can follow in her footsteps, from first vision, to insistent perseverance, to eventual triumph.

Ways To The Self

Author: Murray Stein
Publisher: Chiron Publications
ISBN: 1685034942
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Book Description
In this volume, Murray Stein and Diane Stanley explore, compare and contrast key features of the Buddhist view of Self liberation and the Jungian process of individuation. In Chapter One, they share experiences that opened a path to Self-knowledge in their own lives, including psychedelics, meditation, synchronicity, dreams and active imagination. The value of integrating transcendent experiences is explored in Chapter Two. In Chapter Three, they look at art work as soul-work, based on a series of twenty-four pictures from a Jungian analysis. What do such images, absent the specific dream content from which they arise, reveal about the direction of individuation? Chapter Four focuses on the tensions and difficulties of living in two worlds - the temporal and the timeless - as well as on the unconscious drive to bring them into synergy. Finally, the discussion concludes by circling back to the original question and asks: what are the limits and prospects of liberation of the Self?

Classicisms in the Black Atlantic

Author: Ian Moyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192543865
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
The historical and cultural space of the Black Atlantic - a diasporic world of forced and voluntary migrations - has long provided fertile ground for the construction and reconstruction of new forms of classicism. From the aftermath of slavery up to the present day, black authors, intellectuals, and artists in the Atlantic world have shaped and reshaped the cultural legacies of classical antiquity in a rich variety of ways in order to represent their identities and experiences and reflect on modern conceptions of race, nation, and identity. The studies presented in this volume range across the Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanophone worlds, including literary studies of authors such as Derek Walcott, Marlene NourbeSe Philip, and Junot Díaz, biographical and historical studies, and explorations of race and classicism in the visual arts. They offer reflections on the place of classicism in contemporary conflicts and debates over race and racism, and on the intersections between classicism, race, gender, and social status, demonstrating how the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome have been used to buttress racial hierarchies, but also to challenge racism and Eurocentric reconstructions of antiquity.

Rethinking Contemporary British Women’s Writing

Author: Emilie Walezak
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350171360
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
Providing close readings of well-known British realist writers including Pat Barker, A. S. Byatt, Rose Tremain, Sarah Hall, Bernadine Evaristo and Zadie Smith, this book uses new directions in material and posthuman feminism to examine how contemporary women writers explore the challenges we collectively face today. Walezak redresses negative assumptions about realism's alleged conservatism and demonstrates the vitality and relevance of the realist genre in experimenting with the connections between individual and collective voices, human and non-human meditations, local and global scales, and author and reader. Considering how contemporary realist writing is attuned to pressing issues including globalization, climate change, and interconnectivity, this book provides innovative new ways of reading realism, examines how these writers are looking to reinvent the genre, and shows how realism helps reimagine our place in the world.