Extravagant Strangers

Shakespeare called Othello "an extravagant and wheeling strangerOf here and every where." In this exciting anthology, Caryl Phillips has collected writings by thirty-nine extravagant strangers: British writers who were born outside of Britain and see it with clear and critical eyes. These eloquent and incisive voices prove that English literature, far from being pure or homogenous, has in fact been shaped and influenced by outsiders for over two-hundred years.

CONTENTS:

Editor's Note
Preface

The Shortcomings of Christian England (1770)  Ukawasaw Gronniosaw
Letter to Mr. Sterne (1776)  Ignatius Sancho
Voyage to England (1789)  Olaudah Equiano
A Word about Dinners (1846)  William Thackeray
From The Nigger of 'Narcissus' (1897)  Joseph Conrad
The English Flag (1891)  Rudyard Kipling
Letter to David Kahma (1947);  Letter to Edgar Preston Richardson (1948); Letter to Geoffrey Stone (1948)  Wyndham Lewis
Letter to Henry Eliot (1914); Letter to Eleanor Hinkley (1914)  T.S. Eliot
The Tiredness of Rosabel (1924)  Katherine Mansfield
First Steps (1979)  Jean Rhys
Bloomsbury: An Encounter with Edith Sitwell (1932)  C.L.R. James
Confessions of a Down and Out (1933)  George Orwell
From Choice of Straws (1965)  E.R. Braithwaite
London at Night (1969)  Lawrence Durrell
In Defence of the Underground (1987)  Doris Lessing
From The Angel at the Gate (1982)  Wilson Harris
From The Lonely Londoners (1956)  Samuel Selvon
'From Lucy: Englan' Lady (1982); 'From Lucy: Carnival Wedd'n', 1981 (1982)  James Berry
From Three Continents (1987)  Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
A Voyage (1954)  George Lamming
An Ingrate's England (1989)  Peter Porter
First Impressions of London (1993)  J.G. Ballard
From Little Eden: A Child at War (1978)  Eva Figes
The Journey (1987)  V.S. Naipaul
From Oleander, Jacaranda (1994)  Penelope Lively
From Bye-Bye, Blackbird (1971)  Anita Desai
From Darkest England (1996)  Christopher Hope
Living in Earl's Court (1984)  Shiva Naipaul
A General Election (1983)  Salman Rushdie
From Pilgrim's Way (1988)  Abdulrazak Gurnah
The Child I Never Was (1986); Assassins (1983)  George Szirtes
From Sour Sweet (1982)  Timothy Mo
Fly Away Home (1997)  William Boyd
Inglan is a Bitch (1980)  Linton Kwesi Johnson
From Reef (1994)  Romesh Gunesekera
From The Remains of the Day (1989)  Kazuo Ishiguro
London Taxi Driver (1988)  David Dabydeen
The Machine That Cried (1986)  Michael Hoffman
Disparities (1986)  Ben Okri