T
oward the end of the
20th century, the world
was becoming a smaller
place. The accelerating pace of
technological advances, particularly
transportation and communications,
brought about a globalization of
trade and cultures on a scale never
seen before. Political changes, most
noticeably the liberalization of
Eastern European communist bloc
countries and the lifting of the Iron
Curtain, also helped foster ever-
greater international links.
At the same time as nations
around the globe developed their
own distinct postcolonial cultures,
Europe and North America became
influenced by multiculturalism,
which led to a realization within
the West that its culture could no
longer be considered a benchmark
for the rest of the world.This was a period in which the first
generation of writers to have been
born in nations that had gained
independence from the European
empires came of age. Many writers
admired the new techniques of
postmodernism that some South
American authors had adopted
as a style, and especially the genre
of magic realism. The English
language still dominated the
literary world, however, and it was
people from the old British Empire
who came to prominence in the
first wave of postcolonial literature.New national voices
India produced authors such as
Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth
who, writing in English, portrayed
the experiences of the new India
after independence and partition.
Local voices also emerged in otherformer outposts of empire, including
the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott
and the novelist V. S. Naipaul. In
Canada, Australia, and South
Africa, where many people had
resettled from the UK, British
influence on writing waned and
literature began to appear that
was recognizably of those nations.
New styles of writing were
also emerging in Asia, as writers
sought to establish a national
identity in a modern China after
the upheaval of the Cultural
Revolution, and in a Korea that was
now divided into an authoritarian
north and a liberal south by the
38th parallel.Multiculturalism
While European culture was losing
its monopoly in its old colonies,
it was also being influenced by294 INTRODUCTION
1968 1976 1981 1989
Chairman Mao Zedong,
China’s communist
leader, dies, bringing
to an end the
Cultural Revolution
that began in 1966.Salman Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children
tells the story of the
partition of India
in the style of magic
realism.The fall of the
Berlin Wall
symbolizes the end
of the Cold War.The photograph “Earthrise”
taken from the Apollo 8
manned spacecraft
orbiting the moon, a year
before the first moon
landing, becomes an iconic
image of our planet.1973 1979 1987 1990
In the postmodern novel
If on a Winter’s Night a
Traveler, by Italo Calvino,
alternate passages are
written in the second
person—“you,” the reader.Toni Morrison
examines the
psychological
effects of slavery
in her novel Beloved.St. Lucian poet Derek
Walcott publishes
Omeros, reinterpreting
Homer’s Iliad in a
postcolonial setting.Thomas Pynchon’s
long and complex
novel Gravity’s Rainbow
combines science and
philosophy with elements
of high and low culture.US_294-295_Ch7_Intro.indd 294 08/10/2015 13:10