BOOK REVIEW: KAORI NAGAI, "IMPERIAL BEAST FABLES: ANIMALS, COSMOPOLITANISM, AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE", LONDON: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2020, 265 P.

Abstract

Although often reduced to moralizing maxims, enjoyed for their exoticism, or relegated to the realm of children’s literature, fables resist such restrictive confinements by creating a narrative space that invites the contemplation of intricate political, social, and (trans)cultural relations. Kaori Nagai’s Imperial Beast Fables: Animals, Cosmopolitanism and the British Empire underlines this generic potential by examining “the fable as a theatre of the human-animal relationship … within the context of British imperialism” of the long nineteenth century (6).