Books Received

John McLeod, Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis, London and New York: Routledge, 2004. ISBN 0 415 34460 3. £19:99. x + 210 pp. The spatial geographies through which contemporary Britain is being rewritten are beginning to attract a considerable amount of attention; and John McLeod’s incisive and cogent study builds on books such as James Procter’s Dwelling Places (2003) in its account of literary representations of how the advent of new migrant communities since 1950 has changed the face of London. McLeod’s account of how the “imperial centre” has been destabilized by postcolonial forms of social and cultural activity includes discussions of works by Sam Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, Hanif Kureishi, Colin MacInnes, Bernadine Evaristo, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Fred D’Aguiar. All in all, an invaluable addition to the literary remapping of Britain.