The Pleasures of Exile (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)

Lamming, George

ISBN 10: 0472064665 / ISBN 13: 9780472064663

Published by University of Michigan Press, 1992

Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00096468439

Synopsis:

In The Pleasures of Exile, as in his other works, George Lamming embraces the intricate issues of colonization and decolonization with a canny combination of playfulness and seriousness, irony and commitment. “[It] is a reciprocal process,” Lamming observes, “to be a colonial is to be a man in a certain relation; and this relation is an example of exile.” Through a series of interrelated essays, The Pleasures of Exile explores the cultural politics and relationships created in the crucible of colonization. Drawing on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins, as well as his own fiction and poetry, Lamming deftly locates the reader in a specific intellectual and cultural domain while conjuring a rich and varied spectrum of physical, intellectual, psychological, and cultural responses to colonialism. “My subject,” he writes, “is the migration of the West Indian writer, as colonial and exile, from his native kingdom, once inhabited by Caliban, to the tempestuous island of Prospero’s and his language. This book is a report on one man’s way of seeing.”

Review: Migration in the '50s and '60s was formative for a whole generation of Caribbean writers, artists and intellectuals who, as Lamming himself says, became 'West Indian' in London. The Pleasures of Exile is simply the most poignant, eloquent, insightful and poetic set of reflections on that experience. (Stuart Hall)

The passing of more than 40 years hasn't dulled the sheer brazen confidence with which George Lamming brought a West Indian way of seeing to British life and literature. (Peter Hulme)

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Pleasures of Exile (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Publication Date: 1992
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Very Good