The Postcolonial Bildungsroman and the Character of Place

In recent decades authors from across the world have adopted and adapted the bildungsroman literary genre to reflect on coming of age in postcolonial spaces and places. The Postcolonial Bildungsroman and the Character of Place emphasizes matters of space, place, and environment—concepts intrinsically linked to the bildungsroman’s processes of meaning-making and critique.

From Latin America to South Asia to Africa, the contributors focus on three distinct but interrelated themes: ecology, cultural geography, and mediascapes. They consider aesthetic formations that address the themes of spatiality, youth, individual and collective experiences of social stagnation or growth, the unique challenges faced by certain global subjects on account of the places they inhabit, and whether or not futurity is guaranteed for them. This unique collection delves into myriad features of the postcolonial bildungsroman, enlarging our theoretical understanding of the genre as well as of media and literature in the postcolonial world.