Here twenty-one interviews (eighteen with contemporary writers and three with scholars of the short story) reveal the demanding and exhilarating requirements the short story imposes upon its practitioners. Although amateurs delight in writing stories, form proves to demand a master touch, like that of the interviewees.

Boasting new extracts from major works in the field, as well as an impressive list of contributors, this second edition of a bestselling Reader is an invaluable introduction to the most seminal texts in post-colonial theory and criticism.

This volume celebrates Wilson Harris’s eightieth birthday and more than fifty years of creative writing. The most original and profound writer of the Caribbean, he has revolutionized the art of fiction and its language. He has himself contributed to this volume, and several Caribbean writers of a younger generation – Cyril Dabydeen, Fred D’Aguiar, Andrew Jefferson-Miles, Mark McWatt, Caryl Phillips, Lawrence Scott – pay tribute here to his genius. The essays are by critics from the Caribbean, Britain, the United States and continental Europe who have long admired and explored his work. They cover the various genres of Harris’s writing, his poetry, fiction and criticism, and deal with major aspects of his work, bringing out its relevance to the contemporary context of violence in the world, its modernity, and its contribution to the renewal of the humanities.

This book investigates the problematical historical location of the term 'religion' and examines how this location has affected the analytical reading of postcolonial fiction and poetry. The adoption of the term 'religion' outside of a Western Enlightenment and Christian context should therefore be treated with caution. Within postcolonial literary criticism, there has been either a silencing of the category as a result of this caution or an uncritical and essentializing adoption of the term 'religion'. It is argued in the present study that a vital aspect of how writers articulate their histories of colonial contact, migration, slavery, and the re-forging of identities in the wake of these histories is illuminated by the classificatory term 'religion'. Aspects of postcolonial theory and Religious Studies theory are combined to provide fresh insights into the literature, thereby expanding the field of postcolonial literary criticism. The way in which writers 'remember' history through writing is central to the way in which 'religion' is theorized and articulated; the act of remembrance can be persuasively interpreted in terms of 'religion'. The title 'Memory and Myth' therefore refers to both the syncretic mythology of Guyana, and the key themes in a new critical understanding of 'religion'. Particular attention is devoted to Wilson Harris's novel Jonestown, alongside theoretical and historical material on the actual Jonestown tragedy; to the mesmerizing effect of the Anancy tales on contemporary writers, particularly the poet John Agard; and to the work of the Indo-Guyanese writer David Dabydeen and his elusive character Manu.

DIVProvides new insight into the development of black nationalism by examining the intersection of African-American and West Indian nationalist literatures./div