Schneider, Edgar W. Postcolonial English. Cambridge University Press. 2007. Pp. ix+367

Abstract

The volume provides a well-documented detailed account of the development of what we broadly refer to as Postcolonial English, in its multiple manifestations, in particular in its evolutionary dimensions including the ongoing processes. The structure of the book comprises seven chapters – apart from a list of maps, figures and tables, the series Editor’s Foreword, Preface and Acknowledgements, a list of abbreviations (preceding the main body of the book) and relevant lists of notes (pp. 318–310), references (pp. 331–359) and the index of authors (pp. 360–362) complemented with the subject index (pp. 363–367), all of which testify to the massive credit acknowledged to other researchers in the field, the field that relies grossly on utmost attention to detail. The book as a whole is an elegant expression of Schneider’s exceptional capacity to combine restless effort with a clear vision inherent in the theoretical commitment, which runs throughout the entire book, and a capacity to design the textual architecture in which the reader would not miss the forest for the trees, where the reader is provided with proper tools to see the shafts of light illuminating the textual construction, in spite of the fact that the very ‘light’ is compounded of so many minute and diverse elementary particles.