Introduction

Abstract

The form of nineteenth-century realism offers no simple way to map an ever more complex world-system: the old conventions could portray an industrial town, but are hardly suitable to narrating the operations of the World Bank. And yet, postcolonial writers often show a pugnacious drive to build a cognitive map of their worlds. Recuperating Georg Lukacs’ expectation of a new, experimental realism, this chapter argues for the formal inventiveness of these postcolonial writers. Employing modernist techniques and a realist’s desire to chart social totalities, writers such as Peter Abrahams, George Lamming, Nuruddin Farah, and Zoe Wicomb create an original peripheral realism.