Combining a range of critical perspectivesโcultural materialist, ecocritical, and postcolonialโthe volume opens up a deeper understanding of the relation between paradise discourse and the destructive dynamics of plantation, tourism, and global capital. Deckard uncovers literature from East Africa and South Asia which has been previously overlooked in mainstream postcolonial criticism, and gestures to how the utopian dimensions of the paradise myth might be reclaimed to promote cultural resistance.
Sharae Deckard is a Lecturer in World Literature at the School of English, Drama, and Film at University College Dublin.