The Haunting of Illa Bella Negreeta: Uncanny Home(Lands) in Bernardine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe

Abstract

This paper focuses on Zuleika, a young black inhabitant of Roman Londinium, and her uncanny relationship with her various homes and homelands in Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe. It also argues that the novel may provoke a sense of the uncanny in the reader, leading them to question traditional views of classical and British history as “all-white”.

Keywords

• history
• uncanny
• race
• gender
• nation