ABSTRACT
In June 2010 The Daily Telegraph published an indicative list of the best 20 British writers who represent the defining literary voices of Britain, including immigrant writers such as Mohsin Hamid and Kamila Shamsie and non-immigrant writers such as China Miéville and Steven Hall. What is remarkable is how the parochial sense of the nation is subverted by The Daily Telegraph’s disregard of the criterion of the country of origin in defining the new sense of national literature and hence of national identity. As Lorna Bradbury points out, “we haven’t controlled the types of writing, or worried about whether writers stand in some way for different experiences of Britishness” (n. pag). With a view to Hamid’s 2007 complaint about being referred to as “a Pakistani novelist” despite holding full British citizenship (qtd in Perlez n. pag), The Daily Telegraph’s inclusion of immigrant writers in the category of Britishness can be considered as part of a significant cultural turn that occurred in the 21st century with regard to the definition of the major distinctions between national and international, global and local. This perspective pinpoints an overwhelming drive to locate the new sense of Britishness in the contact
zone where both the global and local merge harmoniously in what is known as “post-migratory literature”. The Daily Telegraph’s list tries hard, in other words, to redefine British national literature and to thereby revise ideas of national belonging by adopting a deconstructionist approach which, unlike a multiculturalist one, presupposes the construction of culture beyond any essentialist features of the tribe in terms of gender, race or ethnicity. Consequently, The Daily Telegraph’s “Britain’s best writers” list seems to be driven by talent and potential rather than by class or race markers.
