Caryl Phillips, David Dabydeen and Fred D'Aguiar

Slavery is a recurring subject in works by the contemporary British writers Caryl Phillips, David Dabydeen and Fred D’Aguiar, yet their return to this past arises from an urgent need to understand the racial anxieties of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Britain. This book examines the ways in which their literary explorations of slavery may shed light on current issues in Britain today, or what might be thought of as the continuing legacies of the UK’s largely forgotten slave past. In this highly original study, Abigail Ward looks at a range of novels, poetry and non-fictional works by Phillips, Dabydeen and D’Aguiar in order to consider their creative responses to slavery. This is the first study to focus exclusively on contemporary British literary representations of slavery, and thoughtfully engages with such notions as the history, memory and trauma of slavery and the ethics of writing about this past. Written for students, academics and the general reader interested in contemporary British or Caribbean writing, this authoritative work offers a clear, accessible and interesting guide to the ways in which the transatlantic slave trade is represented in recent postcolonial literature.