The Pleasures of Exile (Ann Arbor Paperbacks Series) - Softcover

In The Pleasures of Exile, as in his other works, George Lamming embraces the intricate issues of colonization and decolonization with a canny combination of playfulness and seriousness, irony and commitment. &;[It] is a reciprocal process,&; Lamming observes, &;to be a colonial is to be a man in a certain relation; and this relation is an example of exile.&;
 
Through a series of interrelated essays, The Pleasures of Exile explores the cultural politics and relationships created in the crucible of colonization. Drawing on Shakespeare&;s The Tempest and C. L. R. James&;s The Black Jacobins, as well as his own fiction and poetry, Lamming deftly locates the reader in a specific intellectual and cultural domain while conjuring a rich and varied spectrum of physical, intellectual, psychological, and cultural responses to colonialism. &;My subject,&; he writes, &;is the migration of the West Indian writer, as colonial and exile, from his native kingdom, once inhabited by Caliban, to the tempestuous island of Prospero&;s and his language. This book is a report on one man&;s way of seeing.&;