A highly useful text for students of postcolonial literature.
Modern Philology An accessible introduction for students ... thought-provoking discussions of some interesting works.
Helen Hayward, Times Literary Supplement
This is a learned, lucid and innovative book by one of the leading scholars in the field. At once a very useful resource for students and also a major contribution to scholarly thinking, it offers a refreshing new perspective on key postcolonial novels in English and the theoretical debates these texts have sparked. Lane's rare talent for explaining complex theoretical concepts while preserving the inherent difficulty of these ideas is fully engaged here.
The Postcolonial Novel is the best study of its kind to date in postcolonial studies.
Deborah L. Madsen, University of Geneva
In The Postcolonial Novel, Richard J. Lane offers his readers wonderfully open and fresh readings of some of the most important works in the canon such as Palace of the Peacock, Things Fall Apart, Foe and Surfacing. With these readings he brings his theoretical expertise to bear in subterranean ways that illuminate the texts while foregrounding the pleasures and intricacies of their stories. Readers less experienced in postcolonial theory than Lane is will have no difficulty following his approach and they will, as I have, come away from this book convinced that, in large part, postcolonial theorists like Spivak, Bhabha, Said, Foucault and Genette developed their ideas in tandem with the creative writers or, indeed, in response to these novels.
Sherrill Grace, University of British Columbia
