Indeed, I have exotic memories of a time before I was ever exposed to such a dull text. This work exhudes everything that is wrong with academic writing; it is pretentious, dull, long-winded and narrow. Ultimately, Bongie makes a seemingly abstruse argument--in shockingly baroque, inflated prose--that merely tells us what we already know. This alleged work of scholarship simply conveys, in a mercilessly bland style, what any reader grasps with a cursory examination. DO NOT READ THIS!

I loved the book and would merely like to point out that the author of the other review couldn't even spell...keeping this in mind, take her/his review with a grain of salt. If you can't even spell don't bother trying to review academic literature, tsk tsk.

Bongie seems to have recycled the more pedestrian ideas of Edward Said--after filtering out the passion, erudition and skillful prose--without contributing anything original himself. This book is boring, derivative and poorly editted (I counted 17 factual errors and 4 typographical errors within the first three chapters alone). Bongie adds nothing to the world of scholarship. After reading some of the 5-Star assessments of this book, I wonder who's penned these rave reviews...

This text is thoroughly academic, in all that the word implies: boring, pretentious, smug, small and ad hoc. The author researches thoroughly, and uses this research with rhetorical skill, but what's the point? He does nothing but demonstrate the apparent truth of a very small island of thought. In publishing, we distinguish between Writing and academic work. The latter is an industry that exists only for itself, eating more of its slender tail every year. No one wants to read this stuff and, I would imagine, few people actually enjoy writing it. Bongie knows his subject matter well, from an academic perspective, but like many "post-colonial" and Marxist scholars he knows next to nothing about the people whom he, with much presumption, attempts to speak for. Who are his own people? Maybe he should write about them instead. Or perhaps he shouldn't.

This is a great book. Bongie takes the study of post-colonial books and funkatizes the mother. This is undeniable. Many of my friends agree with me. I have read alot of books.