Gikandi explores the politics of identity to analyze how the colonial experience inspired narrative forms that changed the nature of the English identity by surveying the British imperial tradition since the nineteenth century. He provides detailed readings of the works of Trollope, Carlyle, and others; through the narratives of imperial women travelers such as Mary Kingsley and Mary Seacole; and through Africanist texts by Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene and postcolonialists such as Salman Rushdie and Joan Riley.