Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time

First book-length study to examine colonial and postcolonial temporalities through the analytic of waiting Drawing from critical time and postcolonial studies, this book argues that 'waiting' is an essential concept in theorising the relationship between time and power in postcolonial fiction across the long twentieth century - one that illuminates the contradictory temporalities that underlie narratives of colonial progress, modernisation and development. This study contributes to the resurgence of interest in time within literary studies by contending that waiting is integral to postcolonial temporalities, from anticolonial nationalist movements to forms of reconciliation after conflict. In addition to innovative readings of both classic and contemporary postcolonial novels, ranging from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness to Ishmael Beah's Radiance of Tomorrow, Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time challenges characterisations of the twentieth century as a time of acceleration by arguing for the centrality of waiting to time-consciousness in the postcolonial world. Amanda Lagji is Assistant Professor of English and World Literature at Pitzer College. Her research interests include postcolonial literatures, critical time studies, and terrorism and literature. She publishes widely on postcolonial literatures, including chapters in Transnational Africana Women's Fictions (2021), Women Writing Diaspora: Transnational Perspectives in the 21st Century (2021), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law (2021) and Timescapes of Waiting: Spaces of Stasis, Delay and Deferral (2019).