"Sandru’s monograph is one of the best-sustained contributions to the discussion on (post)communist cultures. It reveals blind spots not only in communist theory, but also in the discussions on (post) communist literatures and cultures, ways of remembering and forgetting the socialist past. […] Sandru’s study shows that a postcolonial examination of post-war East-Central Europe is not only a good idea, but essential in understanding the dynamics of the post-Cold War ideological order."Dobrota PucherovaWorld Literature Studies, 5:22 (2013), 97-99."Within the field of postcolonial studies, the aspiration to develop analytical means appropriate to the contemporary, globalised, world-system has hitherto been compromised by a failure to engage, first, with the ‘eastern’, ‘second world’ represented by the Soviet system of states, and then, since the annus mirabilis of 1989, with ‘postcommunist’ cultures and societies. The neglect has been symptomatic, not incidental: for all their willed opposition to the ‘Washington consensus’, postcolonialists have found it difficult to think outside the frame of Cold War discourse. It is only very recently that the question of the relation between the respective ‘posts-’ of ‘postcolonialism’ and ‘postcommunism’ has begun to be posed with any rigour or precision. Cristina Șandru is at the forefront of scholars engaged [in] this necessary and important contemporary initiative. Her book pivots on the assumption that developments in East-Central Europe in the quarter-century since the collapse of the Soviet system have stressed the need, as she puts it, ‘to reformulate neo-Marxist models of postcolonial critique to account for a post-communist set of realities and the resurgence of neo-liberalism in the former Second World’. Her suggestion is that a suitably detailed and reflective comparative engagement with the specificities of ‘third’ and . . . ‘second’ world societies could prove germinative in two respects. First, in illuminating the contours . . . of cultural practice in the (post-) communist sphere, in which, as in the (post-) colonial sphere, ‘cultural identity has been crucially shaped by its history of subjection to foreign rule’. Second, in expanding the remit of postcolonial studies, not merely through simple ‘extension’, but by forcing it to confront its own constitutive blind spots and to move beyond them. Historically sensitive and theoretically discriminating, Șandru’s study will contribute decisively to the reformulation of postcolonial studies (and of comparative literary studies) that is currently (and at last!) underway."Prof. Neil LazarusUniversity of Warwick"This excellent book is ambitious, artful and timely – one which makes a distinct and transformative intervention in the field of postcolonial studies. In exploring the complex interface of the postcolonial, (post)communist and East-Central Europe, Șandru sets the agenda for an entirely fresh terrain of vital research. An elegant and sophisticated engagement with a wealth of cultural and critical texts, her study breaks new ground in showing how we might regard and re-evaluate the nested imperialisms that have characterised world systems of domination and expropriation."Prof. John McLeodUniversity of Leeds"A searching and original study which captures, using and reworking the theoretical framework and methodologies of postcolonial studies, the new psycho-geographical spaces of postcommunist East-Central Europe, by analysing and interrogating its discourses of nationalism, ideology, cultural imaginaries, trauma, complicities and resistance. Worlds Apart? is a long overdue comprehensive account that charts the massive cultural changes and dislocations that have taken place since the fall of communism in 1989."Prof. Janet WilsonUniversity of Northampton