ABSTRACT
The project of elaborating the “postcolonial” in relation to the experimental or the avant-garde poses two challenges. The first is the sheer unwieldiness of the category of the “postcolonial” itself, covering as it does dozens of national and cultural contexts, multiple languages, and very different, often internally variegated, literary histories. Were it even possible to narrow the terms of engagement down to experimental writing in English alone, the scope of the category remains vast, ranging from modernist novels from the Indian subcontinent and rewritings of Greek tragedy in Nigeria to protest poetry in South Africa, feminist fiction in New Zealand and the short story in Zimbabwe. The catalogue of experimental writers in English would range from Amos Tutuola (Nigeria) and G.V. Desani (India) to more recent talents like Dambubzo Marachera (Zimbabwe), Salman Rushdie (India/Britain) and Mudrooroo (Australia).
