Explores the 20th century literary revival of Empire and the post-imperial novel through a critical medical humanities lens.• Offers new insights into an established genre of twentieth-century literature through the application of a critical medical humanities lens.• Adds to scholarly understanding of the perceived legacy of Empire in culture and society of the twentieth century through comparative analysis of a selection of well-known Booker Prize winning novelists.• Offers a balance of close reading of key novels in addition to critical approaches to history, historiography and context to explore the representation of Britishness and identity after Empire.• Explores the relationship between illness, nationhood, and culture/history, so of acute contextual relevance.The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature & History after Empire undertakes a detailed analysis of the use of medicine as a recurrent and defining trope of post-imperial fiction published between 1950 and 1990. The book argues that during this crucial period of recent history, when the influence and prestige of the British Empire was nearing its end, a range of contemporary novelists including J. G. Farrell, Paul Scott, John Masters, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Salman Rushdie identified and used medicine as a discursive paradigm through which to engage critically with the history, authority and legacy of the British Empire within their writing. Drawing on a range of literary and archival sources, this work explores the complex relationship between Britain, India and Empire through a medical lens, bringing together the concerns of literary study and medical history under an interdisciplinary and original methodological framework.
Sam Goodman
Sam Goodman is Principal Academic in English & Communication at Bournemouth University, UK. His research interests focus on formations of identity in relation to literature and the medical humanities, particularly around Britishness, and the history and legacy of the British Empire. He is the author of British Spy Fiction & the End of Empire (Routledge, 2016), and editor of Medicine, Health & the Arts: Approaches to Medical Humanities (Routledge, 2014).
Editorial Reviews
“This absorbing study of post-war Anglo-Indian historical fiction examines the representation of medicine in its material aspects and metaphorical meanings in a detailed, perceptive reading of a select number of significant novels that implicitly articulate Britain’s post-imperial condition. Goodman’s timely book is an intelligent contribution to scholarship on post-war fiction, imperial nostalgia and the medical humanities.”
—Mariadele Boccardi, University of the West of England