The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere

by Tabish Khair

Starting with a re-examination of the role of the colonial/racial Other in mainstream Gothic (colonial) fiction, this book goes on to engage with the problem of narrating the 'subaltern' in the post-colonial context. It engages with the problems of representing 'difference' in lucid conceptual terms, with much attention to primary texts, and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of colonial discourses as well as postcolonialist attempts to 'write back.' While providing rich readings of Conrad, Kipling, Melville, Emily Brontë, Erna Brodber, Jean Rhys and others, it offers new perspectives on Otherness, difference and identity, re-examines the role of emotions in literature, and suggests productive ways of engaging with contemporary global and postcolonial issues.

Genres: Gothic, Nonfiction, Post Colonial

205 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Tabish Khair was born and educated in Bihar, India. He worked in Delhi as a Staff Reporter until his late twenties and is now a professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. Winner of the All India Poetry Prize, his novels have been shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize (Hong Kong), the Hindu Best Fiction Prize and the Crossword Vodafone Literature Awards (India), the Encore Award (UK) and for translation prizes in Denmark and France.

Reviews

[Jayden King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enlightening and essential reading for anyone interested in postcolonial approaches to literature. Although the focus is on Gothic fiction, the points contained herein carry easily over into other genres and will be very useful for my studies in other genres of speculative fiction such as fantasy fiction.

[sommer🍉 · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book fascinated me. picked it up for the section on heathcliff and read other sections of it that were about books i hadn’t even read because the commentary was so profound. an incredible piece of scholarly literature.