£20.00
About the Book
South Asians have lived in Britain for centuries. From the first trade conducted between the two nations along the Silk Route to the adoption of Chicken Tikka Masala as a national dish, the ongoing mutual exchange of cultures continues to flourish today. Asian Britain vividly charts Britain’s process of coming to terms with the historic realities of its culturally diverse past and present.
This extraordinary photographic history draws upon culture, film, music, the military, business, the suffragist movement and the different phases of historic settlement of Asian migrants from the subcontinent, the Caribbean and East Africa. Personalities from the arts, business, politics and sport appear alongside the pioneers – the first female law student at Oxford, the first Indian RAF pilots, the first Asian MP – and of equal significance are the experiences and history of the ordinary immigrants.
About the Author
Florian Stadtler was an Open University Research Fellow (2008-2013) on two AHRC-funded projects investigating the cultural, social and political history of Asian Britain. He has published on South Asian cinema, history and writing, including Fiction, Film and Indian Popular Cinema: Salman Rushdie's Novels and the Cinematic Imagination. He is Lecturer in Global Literature at the University of Exeter.
Susheila Nasta MBE is editor-in-chief of the internationally distinguished literary magazine, Wasafiri, which she founded in 1984. Currently Professor of Modern Literature at the Open University, she has published widely on the black and South Asian diasporas. Since 2007, Nasta has been Director of a major interdisciplinary research project on Asian Britain. Her publications include Asian Britain: A Photographic History (The Westbourne Press), Home Truths: Fictions of the South Asian Diaspora in Britain, Writing Across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk and India in Britain: South Asian Networks and Connections. She lives in London.
Reviews
‘Breathtaking ... charts a fascinating and important untold social history’ Daily Mail
‘Celebrates the long, and sometimes surprising, history of Asian people in the UK … Poignant’ Guardian
‘Over three hundred pages of beautifully reproduced, often rare, illustrations with an accompanying explanatory text, introduced by BBC correspondent Razia Iqbal … The historical record that Nasta illustrates is longer than most of us realise. Her book contains fascinating portraits of Indians who settled in Britain from the 18th Century onwards … A timely new account.’ Asian Review of Books
