British Asian fiction Twenty-first-century voices [Paperback]

This is the first text to focus solely on the writing of British writers of South Asian descent born or raised in Britain. Exploring the unique contribution of these writers, it positions their work within debates surrounding black British, diasporic, migrant, and postcolonial literature in order to foreground both the continuities and tensions embedded in their relationship to such terms, engaging in particular with the ways in which this 'new' generation has been denied the right to a distinctive theoretical framework through absorption into pre-existing frames of reference.

Focusing on the diversity of contemporary British Asian experience, the book engages with themes including gender, national and religious identity, the reality of post-9/11 Britain, the post-ethnic self, urban belonging, generational difference and youth identities, as well as indicating how these writers manipulate genre and the novel form in support of their thematic concerns.

Introduction

1. Salman Rushdie and V. S. Naipaul

2. Hanif Kureishi

3. Ravinder Randhawa

4. Atima Srivastava

5. Nadeem Aslam

6. Meera Syal

7. Hari Kunzru

8. Monica Ali

9. Suhayl Saadi

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

This is a carefully documented and thoughtfully organised work which offers clear guidelines for examining writers who are trying to rethink cultural and ethnic positioning as both possibilities and limits for 21st-century writers.

Sara Upstone is Lecturer in English Literature at Kingston University