Contains a discourse on the ‘new literatures’ emerging in the territories of the old European empires. These literatures include not only those of post-colonial societies in Africa, Asia and the Americas, but also works written in the last years of Russia's domination of eastern and central Europe. These works have in common a resistance to the political, economic and cultural domination of the imperial centres and the attempt to reach beyond imposed forms to discover an authentic tradition which can give independence and meaning to the present.