Postcolonial purgatory: the space of migrancy in Dirty Pretty Things

[Summary of the book containing this chapter:] Postcolonial Spaces is the first collection of interdisciplinary essays to focus on the crucial role of space in the study of the politics of contemporary postcolonial experience. It brings together influential scholars from the fields of media, film, literature, and geography, embodying the centrality of interdisciplinary thinking to recent postcolonial scholarship. The book includes essays from a wide range of geographies, encompassing Europe, South America, South Asian, Australasia, and the Caribbean. As well as a comprehensive introduction, essays engage with a broad spectrum of postcolonial spatialities, including: Caryl Phillips's Northern landscapes; the role of clothing in Islam and the fiction of Monica Ali; the domestic spaces of South Asian women writers; Peter Carey's representation of territory; South Asian children's literature; map-making in Equador, Michel Foucault's territorial thinking; Jamaica Kincaid's use of the garden-space; migrant spaces in Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things; Bombay in contemporary Indian film; and the spatial politics of theory in the western academy. Featuring a Foreword from Edward Soja, the volume offers a wealth of material for postcolonial students and scholar