A collection of essays on literature and film covering Peter Carey's 'Jack Maggs' read through Marx's critique of capitalism, John Fowles's 'A Maggot', Andrea Levy's 'Small Island', Ursula Le Guin's 'The Left Hand of Darkness' in relation to Taoism, Gillian Armstrong's film 'My Brilliant Career', the political writing of Tom Paine, Michael Thelwell's novel 'The Harder They Come', Caribbean fiction including Wilson Harris, Ralph de Boissiere, Zee Edgell, Erna Brodber and Earl Lovelace, and post-colonial London in the works of Linton Kwesi Johnson, Sam Selvon and Derek Walcott.