A bittersweet view of contemporary London, through an American TV anchorman's re-evaluation of his life and criticisms of Thatcherite values; his sax-playing daughter's romanticism, disillusionment and despair; and a friend's odyssey through the city's streets. By the author of "Blue Fruit".
MASKS is an archaeology of the racial imagination, exploring the work of both black and white artists and writers. It shows how the racist belief in innate intellectual and moral difference developed from the classificatory sciences of the Enlightenment. It also questions the more opaque racism of integration, where professed ideas of 'equal' so often mean 'like us'. Lively places these two tendencies against an 'existential' definition of blackness, which has come mostly from black writers themselves. In his penetrating study, Adam Lively looks closely at eighteenth century novels, jazz and rap, propagandist verse, the trickster tales of slaves and their autobiographical narratives, the science of Darwin and fictions of blood and empire. Examining the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and the effects of black feminism, he argues that only by understanding the complex evolution of present attitudes can we understand the impact of race on our imaginations, and on our lives.
Original Stories by Britain's Best New Young Writers
A collection of short stories by young British writers, this provides an introduction to the work of Iain Banks, Peter Benson, H.S. Bhabra, James Buchan, Patricia Ferguson, Ronald Frame, Patrick Gale, Carlo Gebler, James Lasdun, Deborah Levy, Adam Lively, Aidan Mathews, Candia McWilliam, Geoff Nicholson, Tim Parks, Philip Ridley, Joan Smith, Rupert Thomson, Daisy Waugh and Mathew Yorke. Many of these have already received critical acclaim. The collection is introduced by Graham Swift, author of "Waterland" and "Out of this World".