Where Do We Go from Here? The Globalized World as Reflected in Rose Tremain’s The Swimming-Pool Season, Letter to Sister Benedicta and The Road Home
Where Do We Go from Here? The Globalized World as Reflected in Rose Tremain’s The Swimming-Pool Season, Letter to Sister Benedicta and The Road Home

Summary/Abstract: There are certain words that seem to have become definitory for our European lifestyle. Among those, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘globalization’ and ‘the European Union’ have become the labels that are applied everywhere and every time. It is no wonder that, for quite some time now, writers have tried to exploit the newly found pro-European Union theme of cultural diversity sans frontières, in an attempt to catch up with their times. It is also true that the issue of post-colonialism still provides writers with rich sources for books. British contemporary author Rose Tremain is by no means an exception; on the contrary, she has always welcomed controversy and challenge in a book of fiction. Therefore, my paper will focus on three of Rose Tremain’s novels, in an attempt to answer the question in the title, ‘Where do we go from here?’. In our contemporary world, nobody is happy ‘at home’, and the mirage of other horizons haunts the contemporary mind and soul. This paper will examine the journeys that Tremain’s characters make from Britain to France or India and back, and Eastern Europe to Britain and back. Irrespective of the characters’ destination, the result of travelling half the world in search for work/one’s lost self is the same: redefing and/or reinventing oneself in the process.

• Details
• Contents