Intimate afterlives of empire

Memory and decolonisation in autobiography

By: Astrid Rasch

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Hardcover | 2 September 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover
252 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.4 x 15.6 x 23.4

Hardcover

$214.49

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Through close readings of almost twenty autobiographies written after the break-up of the British Empire, the book examines how individuals engage with the changing narrative landscape brought about by decolonisation. It considers the autobiographies less for what they may teach us about the moment remembered and more as windows on the act of remembering. This adds a crucial dimension to our understanding of the legacies of colonialism and how the ongoing process of decolonisation is reflected on the level of the individual. It argues that autobiographers are at once influenced by and seek to influence the cultural memory of empire and its legacies, and the authors' own position in both. Situated at the intersection of imperial/decolonisation history, memory studies, and life writing studies, the book uncovers this intimate afterlife of empire.

Industry Reviews

'Shuttling between all four corners of the imperial compass, Intimate afterlives of empire brilliantly shows how memory is made up of metaphors, and how these travel and transpose between autobiographical writing from very different contexts. Astrid Rasch deftly traces influential shifts between individual and collective memory, and colonial and decolonial experience, persuasively showing how these are embedded in one another. The book ranges across a remarkable spectrum of writers, from Patrick White through to Afua Hirsch, and demonstrates how the colonial past continues to repeat upon the present, in ways we perhaps could not have fully anticipated, had we not been reading these autobiographies, and Intimate afterlives alongside them.'
Elleke Boehmer FRSL FRHistS, Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford

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