The Ultimate Colony (The Child in Postcolonial Fiction)

The Ultimate Colony explores the reasons for the frequent use of the child figure and the consciousness of the child in the English novel of the past fifty years in different parts of the world, with special focus on post-colonial writers from Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent, all countries which have gone through colonial experience under the British. Children become central to the postcolonial strategy of critiquing colonialist tactics and subverting the imperial centre thus becoming the image of disempowerment as also the means of seeking restitution of power in conjunction with the idea of the nation. The child becomes a metaphor for the newborn nation, the growth pangs of one finding an echo in those of the other. The development of the child highlights the writer's negotiation with the problematic of postcoloniality, the acknowledgement of fresh ethical responsibilities on his part, reinforcing the child's tropological import as a recuperating, recovering entity.

Meenakshi Bharat is a Reader in English at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. She is a well-known translator, reviewer and critic.

**Contents and Sample Pages**