This book engages with current developments in postcolonial research, exploring notions of cultural transmission, tradition and modernity, authenticity, cross-cultural aesthetics and postcolonial ethics. The author considers the ethical responsibility of the postcolonial intellectual, enhancing our understanding of this through the concept of custodianship - a responsibility towards the other in forms of cultural and literary inheritance. The author introduces custodianship as a central theme and vital question for the committed intellectual, proposing new interpretations of postcolonial texts by key figures such as Anita Desai, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Mahasweta Devi and Arundhati Roy.