Multiculturalism and magic realism? Between fiction and reality

Since the 1970s, there has been an increasing concern with the impact of colonialism and postcolonialism on British identities and culture and the influence that the former British Empire had and still has on people in the former colonies and in Britain today. Novels like Salman Rushdie’s "Midnight’s Children" or "The Satanic Verses", Hanif Kureishi’s "The Buddha of Suburbia", Meera Syal’s "Anita and Me", Timothy Mo’s "Sour Sweet", Sam Selvon’s "The Lonely Londoners" and Monica Ali’s "Brick Lane" along with films like "Bend it like Beckham" or TV series like "The Kumars at No. 42" and "Da Ali G Show" exemplify this rather new phenomenon and its world-wide success.

They are representative of a large group of multicultural novels and productions created during the last few decades. Although multiculturalism is not new in the media, there has been a special boom of writers of the "empire within" during the last ten years.