Fictions of Migration in Contemporary Britain and Ireland

This book examines how the transcultural and transnational migration of people, texts, and ideas has transformed the paradigm of national literature, with Britain and Ireland as case studies. The study questions definitions of migration and migrant literature that focus solely on the work of authors with migrant backgrounds, and suggests that migration is not extraneous but intrinsic to contemporary understandings of national literature in a global context. The fictional work of authors such as Caryl Phillips, Colum McCann, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Rose Tremain, Elif Shafak, and Evelyn Conlon is analysed from a variety of perspectives, including transculturality, cosmopolitanism, and Afropolitanism, so as to emphasise how their work fosters an understanding of national literature, as well as of individual and collective identities, based on transborder interconnectivity.

1. Introduction: Migration, Mobility and the Redefinition of National Literatures in a Global Context. - 2. A Cosmopolitan Revision of the Postcolonial `Home in Caryl Phillips s A Distant Shore and Foreigners. - 3. From Exilic to Mobile Identities: Colum McCann s Let the Great World Spin and the Cosmopolitanisation of Irish Reality. - 4. `Memories of lost things : Narratives of Afropolitan Identity in Abdulrazak Gurnah s By the Sea and Gravel Heart. - 5. Against the Fear of Complexity: Ethical and Aesthetic Engagement with De-racialising the Muslim Migrant in Elif Shafak s Honour. - 6. Solidarity through the Bare Life of Migrants and noeuds de mémoire in Rose Tremain s The Colour and The Gustav Sonata. - 7. `A map of bird migration : Redefinitions of National Identity through Transnational Mobility and Multidirectional Memory in Evelyn Conlon s Not the Same Sky. - 8. Concluding Remarks: Timespace and Affective Networks in Contemporary Fictions of Migration.