Canada's foremost literary critic looks at the politics of irony in modern writing and explains how it relates to imperial history, how it impacts upon personal memories, how it speaks from the margin, and how it indirectly teaches us to resist presumptuous authority. Funny, informed and emotionally engaging, Grandchild of Empire, an extension of the 2002 Sedgewick Lecture at the University of BC, demonstrates how writers have actively adapted the English language in order to undermine empty conventions of literary and political power, and to affirm, even in bleak times, self-esteem.