Bhabha, in his preface, writes 'Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully encounter their horizons in the mind's eye'.From this seemingly impossibly metaphorical beginning, this volume confronts the realities of the concept of nationhood as it is lived and the profound ambivalence of language as it is written. From Gillian Beer's reading of Virginia Woolf, Rachel Bowlby's cultural history of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Francis Mulhern's study of Leaviste's 'English ethics'; to Doris Sommer's study of the 'magical realism' of Latin American fiction and Sneja Gunew's analysis of Australian writing, Nation and Narration is a celebration of the fact that English is no longer an English national consciousness, which is not nationalist, but is the only thing that will give us an international dimension.

Chapter 1 Introduction, Homi K. Bhabha; Chapter 2 What is a nation?, Ernest Renan, Martin Thom; Chapter 3 Tribes within nations, Martin Thom; Chapter 4 The national longing for form, Timothy Brennar; Chapter 5 Irresistible romance, Doris Sommer; Chapter 6 Denaturalizing cultural nationalisms, Sneja Gunew; Chapter 7 Postal politics and the institution of the nation, Geoffrey Bennington; Chapter 8 Literature - Nationalism's other? The case for revision, Simon During; Chapter 9 Sir Joshua Reynolds and the Englishness of English art, John Barrell; Chapter 10 Destiny made manifest, David Simpson; Chapter 11 Breakfast in America - Uncle Tom's cultural histories, Rachel Bowlby; Chapter 12 Telescopic philanthropy, Bruce Robbins; Chapter 13 European pedigrees/African contagions, James Snead; Chapter 14 English reading, Francis Mulhern; Chapter 15 The island and the aeroplane, Gillian Beer; Chapter 16 DissemiNation, Homi K. Bhabha;