Selection
Rationale
The first
three texts on this list have been chosen because
of their high profile, their relative accessibility,
and the fact that they regularly appear on current
reading group lists. They suggest a certain
consensus about literary value in the present
global literary marketplace, and have a notable
coherence in terms of date of publication, fictional
location (London) and metropolitan consecration.
By exposing these texts to a diverse range of
readers, we will be asking to what extent this
consensus is confirmed or challenged.
The choice of Jackie Kay's
The Adoption Papers is informed by
a broader agenda of this project, which is to
move outwards, or devolve, from London as diasporic
literary capital by focusing on cultural production
and reception in Central Scotland in a period
before the current 'boom' in diasporic fiction.
It will allow us to ask to what extent differences
in literary content, context, genre and period
shape, or are shaped by contemporary reading
practices.
Reading groups outside
the UK will also consider a fifth diasporic
text that has local significance (whether in
terms of fictional content, or place of publication)
to the readers' location. For example, in New
Delhi, the fifth text is Hari Kunzru's Transmission,
a novel that is set in both Central Scotland
and Delhi. Other texts being looked at are
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and
Leila Aboulela's The Translator (African groups), Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Trinidadian group),
and Dionne Brand's What We All Long For
(Canadian group) and Suhayl Saadi’s short story, ‘Extra Time in Paradise’, written in both Standard English and Scots (Scottish Groups).
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