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This collection has valuable contributions to make to our understanding of the literature it includes and, linked to this, the complexities of the world we live in. The essays—the best of them commendable for their incisiveness and reach—bring to our attention key issues, such as the problematics of “home”; the “unevenness of the Black British landscape” in the face of the different migrant encounters within Britain; the counterhegemonic force of the act of memory; the rich cultural traditions which crisscross and animate migrant narratives; and the nature of “self ” and “reality” in a world saturated with the transmissions of globalised capitalism and mass culture. This is surely a collection that can be usefully recommended to students, specialists, and the general reader alike.
It may seem invidious that, having already commented on the scope of the collection, I should end by noting some of the writers, mostly recent, who are missing here. One thinks, for instance, of Manzul Islam, Kamila Shamsie, and—now that he has departed the United States for London—Mohsin Hamid. One could wish also that short stories as well as novels had been included for discussion. To say so, however, is to recognise that what has prompted these reflections is the tantalising flexibility of the category British Asian as it is defined here by Murphy and Sim.
Professor Shirley Chew
University of Leeds, UK