Home Truths: Fictions of the South Asian Diaspora in Britain

Abstract

The figure of the diasporic or migrant writer has recently come to be seen in the West as the 'Everyman' of the late Modern period, a symbol of the local and the global, a cultural traveller who can traverse national, political and ethnic boundaries. Home Truths seeks not only to place the individual works of now famous writers within a diverse tradition of im/migrant writing that has evolved in Britain since the Second World War, but also to locate their work,as well as the work of many lesser known writers within a cultural, historical and aesthetic framework which has its roots prior to postwar migrations and derives from long-established indigenous traditions. Close critical readings combine with a historical and theoretical overview in this first book to chart the crucial role played by writers of South Asian origin in the belated acceptance of a poetics of black and Asian writing today.