Extravagant Strangers

January 4, 1999
This engaging, disturbing anthology collects short pieces, primarily fiction, but also prose and poetry, by British writers not born in Britain. Editor Phillips (The Nature of Blood) has an agenda: to illustrate that "Britain has been forged in the crucible of fusion--of hybridity," that is, by the intersection of various cultures. While some of the included writers are well known for origins outside of Great Britain (Joseph Conrad, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Jean Rhys and Kazuo Ishiguro), others (William Thackeray, T.S. Eliot, George Orwell and Doris Lessing) aren't automatically thought of as being born away from the Blessed Isle. Alongside such luminaries are many obscure but worthy scribes, like 18th-century ex-slave Ignatius Sancho, early 20th-century Trindadian cultural critic C.L.R. James and contemporary fiction writers Christopher Hope, Timothy Mo, Romesh Gunesekera and Ben Okri. Despite the subtitle, most of the pieces deal with the sense of apartness, of difference, rather than of belonging. Sancho writes a letter to Laurence Sterne, asking the most popular novelist of his day to use his pen to strike a blow against slavery. George Orwell reports firsthand on how the poor are despised and mistreated. Fascinating throughout, the collection documents both the ways--from enslavement to racism to mere social snobbery--that certain groups have been treated as outcasts, and the ingenious, imaginative and often troubling responses writers have found to this exclusion.

December 1, 1998
Award-winning novelist Phillips contends that "English literature has, for at least 200 years, been shaped and influenced by outsiders." No one would be surprised to hear this about American writing, but Phillips is referring specifically to Britain. He proves his point with this anthology of works by nearly 40 British writers, none of whom were born in Britain. From black writers who emerged in the wake of the slave trade, through writers born in the colonies, to those who descended from both the colonizers and the colonized, Phillips chooses short pieces or excerpts, introduces each writer with a deft page or two, and then sets the piece in context with a concise paragraph. Familiar names include Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, George Orwell, Doris Lessing, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Recommended for academic libraries.--Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., CO