"Who is Kim?" and "Why is he Irish?"--This book sheds light on this post-colonial riddle by placing it within a web of colonial analogies that existed to create the British Empire as a "reality." It characterizes "Empire" as a discursive battleground in which conflicting and changing models of British hegemony coexisted and were constantly contested.

Kaori Nagai lectures in the School of English at the University of Kent. This is her first book.