Abstract
This chapter explores how Bernardine Evaristo’s novel The Emperor’s Babe imagines and represents lost historical identities within the context of London. Evaristo’s text offers a politically charged palimpsestic view of Britain’s capital city, which is inspired by its Roman predecessor, Londinium, but also speaks to twenty-first-century readers about the lost and marginalized stories of what is now one of the world’s most well-known cosmopolitan cities. The chapter examines the ways in which The Emperor’s Babe draws parallels between ancient and contemporary representations of people living in London and the symbolic value for contemporary readers of the protagonist’s search for a voice of her own.
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Allen, N. (2018). “We Exist Only in the Reflection of Others”: Imagining London’s History in Bernardine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe. In: Michael, M. (eds) Twenty-First-Century British Fiction and the City. Literary Urban Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89728-8_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89728-8_4
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