The present volume is a highly comprehensive assessment of the postcolonial short story since the thirty-six contributions cover most geographical areas concerned. Another important feature is that it deals not only with exclusive practitioners of the genre (Mansfield, Munro), but also with well-known novelists (Achebe, Armah, Atwood, Carey, Rushdie), so that stimulating comparisons are suggested between shorter and longer works by the same authors. In addition, the volume is of interest for the study of aspects of orality (dialect, dance rhythms, circularity and trickster figure for instance) and of the more or less conflictual relationships between the individual (character or implied author) and the community. Furthermore, the marginalized status of women emerges as another major theme, both as regards the past for white women settlers, or the present for urbanized characters, primarily in Africa and India. The reader will also have the rare pleasure of discovering Janice Kulik Keefer's “Fox,” her version of what she calls in her commentary “displaced autobiography’” or “creative non-fiction.” Lastly, an extensive bibliography on the postcolonial short story opens up further possibilities for research.

Table of Contents:
André VIOLA: Introduction Canada Marta DVORAK: Ernest Buckler. Canada’s “Another-Time-and-Space-Builder” Janice KULYK KEEFER: Limitations and Possibilities. On the Writing of Autobiographical Short Fictions Janice KULYK-KEEFER: Fox Françoise COUTURIER-STOREY: Subversive Corporeal Discourse in Margaret Atwood’s “The Female Body” Danielle SCHAUB: A Measure of Irony. Derision in Mavis Gallant’s From the Fifteenth District Mary CONDÉ: Voyage Towards an Ending. Alice Munro’s “Goodness and Mercy” Teresa GIBERT: Narrative Strategies in Thomas King’s Short Stories Rowland SMITH: “Rewriting the Frontier”. Wilderness and Social Code in the Fiction of Alice Munro Simone VAUTHIER: The Mirror and the Window. Jane Urquhart’s “Forbidden Dances” The West Indies Louis JAMES: Writing the Ballad. The Short Fiction of Samuel Selvon and Earl Lovelace Françoise CHARRAS: “Neither Fish Nor Fowl”. Paule Marshall’s Early Short Stories from a Caribbean Perspective Claude MAISONNAT: The Poetics of Death. “Tears of the Sea” by Olive Senior Frances WILLIAMS: Colonial Literature or Caribbean Orature? Creole Chips by Edgar Mittelholzer Thorunn LONSDALE: Literary Foremother. Jean Rhys’s “Sleep It Off Lady” and Two Jamaican Poems Southern Africa Zoë WICOMB: South African Short Fiction and Orality Sheila ROBERTS: “In the Cage of Consciousness” Margaret J. DAYMOND: “Nowhere Yet Everywhere” Johan U. JACOBS: Finding a Safe House of Fiction. Nadine Gordimer’s Jump and Other Stories Tim O. McLOUGHLIN: Women’s Short Fiction in Zimbabwe. Changing Times and Focus Clara TSABEDZE: Resuscitating the Tale in Black South African Writing. The Art of Narrative in Njabulo Ndebele’s Fools West Africa Derek WRIGHT: Developing Agency. The Later Stories of Ayi Kwei Armah Alain SÉVERAC: Achebe’s Short Stories. Their Intertextual Relationship to His Novels Jane WILKINSON: “Second-New”. Serialization and Circulation in Basi and Company by Ken Saro-Wiwa Christine MBONYINGINGO: Unanswered Questions, Unattended Quests. Ama Ata Aidoo’s Short Stories Christine FIOUPOU: Poetry as a “metaphorical guillotine” in the Works of Nisi Osundare India, Sri Lanka and the Diaspora Padmini MONGIA: Confession and Self-Making in the Fiction of Contemporary Indian Women Writers Martina GHOSH-SCHELLHORN: Transitional Identities. Indian Women’s Short Stories Cynthia CAREY-ABRIOUX: ‘Coming Unstuck’. Salman Rushdie’s Short Story “The Courter” Rocío G. DAVIS: Negotiating Place/Re-Creating Home. Short-Story Cycles by Naipaul, Mistry, and Vassanji Paula BURNETT: The Captives and the Lion’s Claw. Reading Romesh Gunesekera’s Monkfish Moon New Zealand Renata CASERTANO: Falling Away From the Centre. Centrifugal and Centripetal Dynamics in Janet Frame’s Short Fiction Mark WILLIAMS: “The Artificial and the Naturel”. The Development of Katherine Mansfield’s Prose Style Lydia WEVERS: Talking about GenX Australia Xavier PONS: Weird Tales. Peter Carey’s Short Stories William H. NEW: Henry Lawson’s “Hungerford” Peter O. STUMMER: The Uneasy Gaze of Secondary Hegemony. The Construction of Africa and New Guinea in Shaw and Shearston Dieter RIEMENSCHNEIDER: The Triangle of Art and Life. Michael Wilding, Story Writer Works Cited Christiane KEANE: The Postcolonial Short Story. A Bibliography of Anthologies Notes on Contributors