The Pleasures of Exile (Pluto Classics)

By George Lamming

Book Overview

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."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0472064665
• ISBN13: 9780472064663
• Release Date: October 1992
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Still applicable to contemporary notions of immigration and exile

Although published in 1960, this collection of essays still carries vast currency. This is a fantastic example of "historical revisionism" in that Prospero and Caliban have their relationship subverted and reformulated. As a descendant of slaves and the product of Western culture (he convincingly makes the case that all of us are either the latter or both), George Lamming realizes that we can't reject our past, but only grow from realizing what it means to us. Out of this tradition we can forge towards a hopeful future, neither forgetting nor refusing to let go of history. We have a responsibility to act for a better future, and Lamming articulates this in myriad splendid ways, through what he says is "one man's experience."