Heart of Whiteness

End of Empire and the English Novel since 1945, edited by Rachael Gilmour and Bill Schwarz, is an essay collection that considers "the English novel, at the time of decolonisation, at its most centred" (3), but which observes its subject through a postcolonial lens. As Elleke Boehmer's afterword argues, End of Empire aims to bridge the "discursive bifurcation" between discussions of the "'Anglo-British' novel," from which discussion of empire is occluded, and postcolonial studies, in which it is "the overriding preoccupation" (240). Bill Schwarz's introduction identifies the collection's intervention as the extension of its field rather than a correction of its emphasis, and the essays that follow thoroughly confirm the value of such work. In its focus on the nation, End of Empire goes against a tide that has turned in favor of studies of literature along transnational lines, throwing the relevance of national paradigms into question.¹ Schwarz insists, however, that to dismiss England and Englishness is to dismiss "a set of problems which remain pressing, and which do not easily go away" (17). End of Empire gives weight to this claim in its repeated depiction of the English "centre" as a psychic entity which has "repressed or occluded" its implication in Empire through a carefully maintained parochialism (5). More of a strategy than an attribute, English "parochialism and insularity" are said to have functioned as "screens," blocking the English from looking directly at evidence of their imperial role in the wider world and so keeping unwelcome knowledge in abeyance. To dispense with the concept of the nation would, subsequent essays convince the reader, only allow those sheltering screens to remain in place.

In terms of genre, this essay collection of the "centre" is in fact profoundly decentered, encompassing forgotten paperback detective novels, travel fiction, SF, and Mills and Boon alongside more canonical texts. It also renews attention to neglected authors like D. H. Lawrence, William Golding, and Anthony Burgess, arguing that a fresh appraisal of the role played by imperial nostalgia in these authors' works has not been fully unpacked. Essays are ordered roughly chronologically, suggesting an element of literary-historical survey. A sense of periodicity emerges most clearly in essays—by Cora Kaplan, Richard Steadman-Jones, and Rachael Gilmour—which consider literature of the 1940s and 1950s and are among the strongest in the collection. Interestingly, what emerges from the chronology is not only the evolution of Englishness but also a countercurrent of intransigence to change and the recurring concerns, questions, and tropes that link texts written decades apart. These points of connection create a conversation between otherwise diverse essays that effectively binds the collection together.

One such moment of connection occurs between the two essays bookending the collection, both of which consider the place of America in the English psyche. These are Patrick Parrinder's review of English science fiction of the 1940s to 1960s and David Alderson's examination of Ian McEwan's changing political sympathies and response to the invasion of Iraq in Saturday (2003). Together they suggest that England's coming to terms with the loss of Empire must be understood as part of a triangular relationship with the United States, a relationship increasingly dominated by America's emergent role as a global superpower. Parrinder finds a latent suspicion of alien/American "invasion" of domestic soil in postwar science fiction, whereas Alderson records post-9/11 literature in which the English are somewhat ambivalent about their role in a different kind of invasion, this time as allies. As a diptych, these essays suggest that the transatlantic relationship has been altered by the tipping of the balance of power in favor of the New World, but they also point to an underlying continuity in the curious combination of attraction and repulsion that continues to exist on the English side.

Although Schwarz announces that the collection will make "no attempt . . . to codify the internal co-ordinates of the English novel...