Island of dreams: Post/colonial imaginaries in contemporary Cypriot Anglophone literature

Abstract

The island of Cyprus has for centuries been a contested terrain, and occupied by various colonial powers. I use Cyprus joining the Commonwealth in 1960 as a starting point to explore the relationship between Cyprus and specifically British colonial rule in the twentieth century, read through the lens of two works by contemporary Anglophone Cypriot authors Polis Loizou and Alexandra Manglis. I examine how these authors undermine colonial imaginaries of the island, using speculative and literary forms to emphasize the slippages, instabilities, and fugitive nature of colonial subjects. Enfolding the complex history of the island within these readings, I posit Cyprus as a mythologically rich and boundary-vexing “island of dreams”, and foreground imaginative writing from Cypriot authors in counterpoint to historical colonial attitudes.