Marcus (English, CUNY-Graduate Center and City College of New York) explores race, gender, and reading in Europe during the 1920s and 30s--a period coinciding with the end of empire and the rise of fascism. The author analyzes the work of such novelists as Virginia Woolf, Nancy Cunard, Mulk Raj Anand, and Djuna Barnes, and their treatment of cultural issues of their time--particularly imperialism and totalitarianism--in an effort to "relocate the heart of darkness in London and Paris, away from those light-filled lands of Africa and India where it has lodged in the Western imagination." Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR