C ontem porary British m igrant literature writes back to the legacies o f im perialism w hile also being firm ly grounded in the present cultural m om ent. A pproaching the reading o f late tw entieth and early tw enty-first century British m igrant narratives from a postcolonial perspective, this research project sets out to deliver a critical assessm ent o f the m ajor them es and preoccupations o f fiction w ritten at the m etropolitan centre that w rites back to im perialism and its legacies, w hile also exploring in detail questions o f cultural identity in the present. The critical approach to the interrogation o f this research question is theoretically grounded in the discipline o f postcolonial literary criticism , w hile also taking cognisance o f im portant scholarship in the field o f cultural studies. The central research question probes the diverse ways in w hich contem porary authors depict im m igrant experience am ongst first and subsequent generation m igrants in Britain. The project considers m yriad m om ents o f intersection and overlap that occur across a diverse selection o f contem porary, L ondon-based narratives o f m igrant experience. Authors o f Black, A sian and Irish ethnicities are read in dialectic exchanges with one another on topics ranging from belonging and exclusion, to identity, to m arginalisation and violence, and the nature o f traum a and m em ory. The aim in reading novels from authors o f different ethnic backgrounds is to establish the extent to w hich m igrant experience is sim ilar or differs am ong diverse ethnic groups. In the project I assert that the im m igrant figure can be seen as a lonely voice in literature, therefore a central aim o f the project is to pay attention to w hat this voice has to say. I argue that an exploration o f the plight o f the im m igrant can inform us about the problem s o f m odem society, including loneliness, isolation, and the breakdow n o f com m unity and lack o f integration. Thus the project is at tim es interdisciplinary in term s o f its theoretical fram ew ork. A lthough postcolonial theory is the foundation o f the main thesis, the argum ents also draw on other areas o f know ledge that inform postcolonial studies, such as psycho geography and m em ory studies