Commonwealth and Postcolonial Writing in English

Unit seventeen ended on Britain and Ireland after Modernism, a period of many modes. This unit widens the map. Its governing idea is that English literature after empire is written far beyond England, that it is not one style, and that place and the moment of empire decide the reading. Like the last unit's, these works are described, not quoted. This first part travels in three steps: what postcolonial means and how English outlived the empire; then Africa, Achebe, Soyinka, Ngũgĩ, Gordimer and Coetzee; and then the Caribbean, India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, from Walcott and Rushdie to Atwood and Mansfield.

We begin with the term itself, how English stayed after the empire went, and Africa's writers in English.

First, what the word names.

ENL 1701 What "Postcolonial" Means on This Exam

Postcolonial literature is writing by people from formerly colonized countries, often addressing colonization and its aftermath: political and cultural independence, identity and language. The exam's British, Commonwealth and postcolonial scope includes writers in English from Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia and beyond. Writing after empire. These works are described, not quoted.

Next, why English remained.

ENL 1702 Empire, Independence and English

After the Second World War, the anchor notes, Britain lost world power as colonies claimed independence: the partition of India in nineteen forty-seven, the Suez Crisis, and the independence of Nigeria in nineteen sixty and Kenya. English remained a literary language in many former colonies. Independence, and English remains. Writing in English became a political choice.

A Nigerian novelist answered the canon.

ENL 1703 Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe, born in Nigeria in nineteen thirty and shaped by both Igbo tradition and colonial Christianity, is regarded as a central figure of modern African literature. His African Trilogy is Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God. He criticized Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Igbo and English; a trilogy. Life details here rest on one reference source.

His first novel borrowed a title.

ENL 1704 Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart, Achebe's first novel, published in London in nineteen fifty-eight, follows Okonkwo, an influential leader of the Igbo clan of Umuofia, who opposes colonialism and early Christianity. Its title comes from Yeats's "The Second Coming." A leader, a clan, colonial arrival. The title borrows Yeats's line.

A Nigerian playwright won the Nobel.

ENL 1705 Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka, born in nineteen thirty-four into a Yoruba family, is a Nigerian playwright, poet and novelist who won the Nobel Prize in nineteen eighty-six. His play Death and the King's Horseman is based on a real colonial incident in which a king's horseman was prevented from ritual suicide. Yoruba ritual, colonial intervention. Facts only for living authors.

One novelist changed languages.

ENL 1706 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and the Language Question

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, a Kenyan novelist who died in two thousand twenty-five, wrote first in English and then switched to Gikuyu. His essays Decolonising the Mind, of nineteen eighty-six, argue for linguistic decolonization, literature in African languages, in the "language debate." From English to Gikuyu. This entry rests on one reference source.

A South African wrote against apartheid.

ENL 1707 Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer, a South African novelist and political activist who died in two thousand fourteen, wrote throughout her career on moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in nineteen ninety-one, recognized for her epic writing. Fiction against apartheid. Gordimer is a white South African writer.

Another won two Bookers.

ENL 1708 J. M. Coetzee

J. M. Coetzee, born in South Africa in nineteen forty and now also Australian, won the Booker Prize twice and the Nobel Prize in two thousand three. His Disgrace, of nineteen ninety-nine, a Booker winner, follows a white professor in post-apartheid South Africa who loses everything. Two Bookers, a Nobel. Facts only for living authors.

Now the Caribbean's poets and novelists, and India's writers in English.

A Saint Lucian won the Nobel.

ENL 1709 Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott, a Saint Lucian poet and playwright who died in two thousand seventeen, won the Nobel Prize in nineteen ninety-two, the Caribbean's major laureate in English. Critics view his long Homeric epic poem Omeros as his greatest achievement. A Caribbean Nobel laureate. Walcott wrote plays and poems.

His epic borrows from Homer.

ENL 1710 Omeros

Omeros, of nineteen ninety, is an epic poem that loosely echoes Homer's Iliad. Its characters include the Saint Lucian fishermen Achille and Hector, the housemaid Helen, a retired English officer, and a blind man, Seven Seas. Homer on a Caribbean island. Plot details here rest on one reference source.

A Trinidad-born novelist.

ENL 1711 V. S. Naipaul

V. S. Naipaul, a Trinidad-born British writer who died in two thousand eighteen, wrote comic early novels set in Trinidad, bleaker novels of alienation and travel chronicles. His breakthrough novel A House for Mr Biswas appeared in nineteen sixty-one. Trinidad, alienation, travel. Naipaul was Trinidad-born of Indian descent.

A prequel to a Victorian novel.

ENL 1712 Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys, a British Creole novelist born on Dominica, wrote Wide Sargasso Sea, of nineteen sixty-six, a postcolonial and feminist prequel to Jane Eyre set in Jamaica. It tells the background to Rochester's marriage from the side of Antoinette, the woman Brontë's novel calls Bertha. Bertha's story told first. This entry rests on one reference source.

A Barbadian poet and historian.

ENL 1713 Kamau Brathwaite and Caribbean Poetry

Kamau Brathwaite, a Barbadian poet and historian who died in two thousand twenty, studied Black cultural life in Africa and the diaspora and the creole society of Jamaica. Criticism on disk links him with "nation language," which W-7 defines as creolised English used for narrative as well as dialogue. Creole, diaspora, nation language. Nation language is Caribbean English.

A novelist under a fatwa.

ENL 1714 Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie, born in Bombay in nineteen forty-seven and educated at Rugby and Cambridge, writes postmodern fiction in the tradition of magic realism. In nineteen eighty-nine Iran's Khomeini declared a fatwa against him over The Satanic Verses; in two thousand twenty-two he survived a stabbing. Postmodern, magic realist, threatened. Facts only for living authors.

A nation's children are linked.

ENL 1715 Midnight's Children

Midnight's Children, of nineteen eighty-one, won the Booker Prize. Narrated by Saleem Sinai, it is a postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist story of India's passage to independence, in which children born at midnight on the fifteenth of August nineteen forty-seven are telepathically linked. Children born with a nation. The narrator's life mirrors India's.

A novelist of displacement.

ENL 1716 Anita Desai

Anita Desai, born in British India in nineteen thirty-seven to an Indian father and a German mother, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, including for In Custody. The anchor describes her psychological insight into the displaced and alienated and women's domestic lives. Displacement and domestic life. Facts only for living authors.

An early Indian novelist.

ENL 1717 R. K. Narayan and Indian Writing in English

R. K. Narayan, who died in two thousand one, was a leading early Indian novelist in English, with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. His works are set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi, beginning with Swami and Friends. The town of Malgudi. This entry rests on one reference source.

A first novel won the Booker.

ENL 1718 Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy, born in nineteen sixty-one, won the Booker Prize with her first novel, The God of Small Things, of nineteen ninety-seven, which follows the twins Estha and Rahel in nineteen-sixties Kerala, against a background of caste and colonial history. Twins, caste, Kerala. Facts only for living authors.

Last, the settler nations: two Canadian writers, an Australian laureate, and two New Zealanders.

A Canadian dystopia.

ENL 1719 Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, a Canadian novelist and poet born in nineteen thirty-nine, has won two Booker Prizes. Her best-known novel, The Handmaid's Tale, of nineteen eighty-five, is a dystopia set in Gilead, a totalitarian state in New England, narrated by Offred, a woman forced to bear children for powerful men. A Canadian dystopia. Plot details here rest on one reference source.

A Canadian wrote only stories.

ENL 1720 Alice Munro

Alice Munro, a Canadian short-story writer who died in two thousand twenty-four, won the Nobel Prize in two thousand thirteen. Her stories, most often set in her native Huron County in Ontario, move backward and forward in time. Short stories of small-town Ontario. Munro wrote short stories, not novels.

Australia's only laureate.

ENL 1721 Patrick White and Australian Writing

Patrick White, an Australian novelist and playwright who died in nineteen ninety, won the Nobel Prize in nineteen seventy-three, the only Australian to do so. His Voss, of nineteen fifty-seven, based on the lost explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, follows an expedition into the outback. An explorer in the desert. White challenged Australian realism.

Two New Zealanders went to England.

ENL 1722 New Zealand: Mansfield to Adcock

New Zealand's writers in English include Katherine Mansfield, who left for England at nineteen and refined the Modernist short story, and Fleur Adcock, who moved to London in nineteen sixty-three and wrote, the anchor says, of divided identity and place. Two New Zealanders in England. Both emigrated to England.

This first part went place by place. We explained what postcolonial means, and how English outlived the empire as a literary language. We described Achebe and his borrowed title, Soyinka's play, Ngũgĩ's turn to Gikuyu, Gordimer against apartheid, and Coetzee. We described Walcott's Homeric epic, Naipaul, Rhys's prequel and Brathwaite's nation language. We described Rushdie's midnight children, Desai, Narayan's Malgudi and Roy's twins. And we identified Atwood's Gilead, Munro's Ontario, White's explorer and two New Zealanders in England. Part two turns to the ideas that connect them.