Fictions of Migration in Contemporary Britain and Ireland

Book excerpt: 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.