Exiles on Main Stream: Valuing the Popularity of Postcolonial Literature

Postcolonial Imaginations: Approaching a “Fictionable” World through the Novels of Maryse Condé and Wilson Harris

“…(Bongie 2003) Bongie (2003) offered Maryse Condé's work as a particularly ambivalent example of Caribbean writing that is claimed as "postcolonial" but the popularity of which directly challenges the elitism of postcolonial studies. He argued that Condé can be identified as a "selfconsciously 'middle-brow' writer," in that the challenging and experimental features of her work fit it for the mantle of "greatness" placed on it by its "postcolonial" positioning but at the same time the pleasurable "page turning" qualities of the writing and the exoticized covers and blurbs of the books also appeal to more popular audiences.…”

“…He argued that Condé can be identified as a "selfconsciously 'middle-brow' writer," in that the challenging and experimental features of her work fit it for the mantle of "greatness" placed on it by its "postcolonial" positioning but at the same time the pleasurable "page turning" qualities of the writing and the exoticized covers and blurbs of the books also appeal to more popular audiences. Condé's books (particularly her historical novels) have sold extremely well in Europe and North America, both in French and in translation: "Condé is in many respects the very model of a middlebrow writer, with all the stylistic restrictions, political ambivalence, and capacity for success in the literary and academic market that this adjective entails" (Bongie 2003).…”