Using Postcolonial Fiction to De-scribe and Re-map London Part 2 Dissertation 2020 Lillie Bamford De Montfort University | UK This study intends to question traditional maps, highlight their often-racist narratives, and show how they are used to support the politics of gentrification in the city of London. An ordnance survey map generates an ‘image of the city’ that is oversimplified and lacks the complexity and multiplicity of everyday life. The cartograms created as a part of this study de-scribe London by offering a counter-narrative that, unlike traditional maps, identifies, valorises, and empowers those labelled by colonialist discourses as ‘Other.’ This counter-narrative will be formed by an interrogation of post-colonial fiction.The study focuses on Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners and Zadie Smith’s NW – both novels that are laden with urban imagery and follow first- and second-generation immigrants as they negotiate London’s built environment and examine their ‘right to the city.’ Using the novels, themes that express intangible qualities that are important to the city fabric but overlooked are mapped onto an ordnance survey map. These themes include home, hybridity, multiculturalism, community and identity. By moving past the simplistic built forms that a traditional map depicts the study hopes to offer a view that celebrates London’s complexity and provides an inclusive foundation to propagate future city plans. Tutor(s) Jon Astbury