This book is the first of its kind to examine the theories of nation and national identity in both the West (according to the theories of Benedict Anderson and Salman Rushdie) and in the East (in the light of the works of Jawaharlal Nehru) as they apply to the novels of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. The second part of the twentieth century witnessed a new interface between fiction and history called “New History”. It brought into its purview the hitherto marginalized sections of society like slaves, peasants, workers, women, and children. Whereas the subalterns in The Inheritance of Loss are disempowered by the brunt of globalisation and neo-colonialism, the subalterns in The God of Small Things face the ire of the deep-seated divisions based on caste and gender bias in a postcolonial society. In addition, this book also deals with contemporary social issues like individual identity in a multicultural world where cultures and nature converge into myriad ways of living. It will be of immense benefit to MA and MPhil students all over India, as well as to PhD scholars and teachers of English literature both in India and abroad.

This anthology demonstrates the significance of Raja Rao’s writing in the broader spectrum of anti-colonial, postcolonial, and diasporic writing in the 20th century. In addition to highlighting Rao’s significant presence in Indian writing, the volume presents a range of previously unpublished material which contextualises Rao’s work within 20th-century modernist, postmodernist, and postcolonial trends. Exploring both his fictional and non-fictional works, Reading India in a Transnational Era engages with issues of subaltern agency and national belonging, authenticity, subjectivity, internationalism, multicultural politics, postcolonialism, and literary and cultural representation through language and translation. A literary volume that discusses gender and identity on both socio-political grounds, apart from dealing with Rao’s linguistic experimentations in a transnational era, will be of interest among scholars and researchers of English, postcolonial and world literature, cultural theory, and Asian studies.

The first volume of its kind, focusing on the sociolinguistic and socio-political issues surrounding Asian Englishes The Handbook of Asian Englishes provides wide-ranging coverage of the historical and cultural context, contemporary dynamics, and linguistic features of English in use throughout the Asian region. This first-of-its-kind volume offers a wide-ranging exploration of the English language throughout nations in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Contributions by a team of internationally-recognized linguists and scholars of Asian Englishes and Asian languages survey existing works and review new and emerging areas of research in the field. Edited by internationally renowned scholars in the field and structured in four parts, this Handbook explores the status and functions of English in the educational institutions, legal systems, media, popular cultures, and religions of diverse Asian societies. In addition to examining nation-specific topics, this comprehensive volume presents articles exploring pan-Asian issues such as English in Asian schools and universities, English and language policies in the Asian region, and the statistics of English across Asia. Up-to-date research addresses the impact of English as an Asian lingua franca, globalization and Asian Englishes, the dynamics of multilingualism, and more. Examines linguistic history, contemporary linguistic issues, and English in the Outer and Expanding Circles of Asia Focuses on the rapidly-growing complexities of English throughout Asia Includes reviews of the new frontiers of research in Asian Englishes, including the impact of globalization and popular culture Presents an innovative survey of Asian Englishes in one comprehensive volume Serving as an important contribution to fields such as contact linguistics, World Englishes, sociolinguistics, and Asian language studies, The Handbook of Asian Englishes is an invaluable reference resource for undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and instructors across these areas.

Cosmopolitanism in the Indian English Novel argues that select novels by Indian writers in English largely present a kind of micro-cosmopolitanism that preserves nation as a primary site for social and cultural formation while opening it up to critique. During colonial times, local cultural expression wrestled with the global as represented by the systems of empire. The ideal subject or literary work was one that could happily inhabit both ends of the center-periphery in a kind of cosmopolitan space determined by imperial metropolitan and local elite cultures. As colonies liberated themselves, new national formations had to negotiate a mix of local identity, residual colonial traits, and new forces of global power. New and more complex cosmopolitan identities had to be discovered, and writers and texts reflecting these became correspondingly more problematic to assess, as old centralisms gave way to new networks of cultural control. This book contends that novels written in the context of the postcolonial cultural politics after the successful attainment of national independence question how a nation is to be made while recognizing its relation to globalization. The strong waves of globalization enforce sociological, political, and economic values in developing countries that may not be readily acceptable in those societies. Cosmopolitanism in the Indian English Novel focuses on three novelists in particular: Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, and Aravind Adiga, all of whom have received the prestigious Man Booker Prize for their work. Despite the varied but broadly elite cosmopolitan positions of these writers, they all depict characters working toward a cosmopolitanism from the grassroots, rather than through a top-down practice. Furthermore, these writers and their works, to varying degrees, turn a suspicious eye to the effects (cultural, economic, or otherwise) of globalization as a phenomenon that can prevent possibilities for more fluid forms of belonging and border-crossing. Cosmopolitanism in the Indian English Novel should appeal to researchers in cultural studies interested in Indian English fiction and/or the form and function of cosmopolitanism in a rapidly globalizing postcolonial world.

This book offers a more complex understanding of Indian writing in English by focusing its analysis on Indo-Pakistani Partition fiction and novels written by women. Featured authors include Salmon Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai and Arundhati Roy.

As the pace of cultural globalization accelerates, the discipline of literary studies is undergoing dramatic transformation. Scholars and critics focus increasingly on theorizing difference and complicating the geographical framework defining their approaches. At the same time, Anglophone literature is being created by a remarkably transnational, multicultural group of writers exploring many of the same concerns, including the intersecting effects of colonialism, decolonization, migration, and globalization. Paul Jay surveys these developments, highlighting key debates within literary and cultural studies about the impact of globalization over the past two decades. Global Matters provides a concise, informative overview of theoretical, critical, and curricular issues driving the transnational turn in literary studies and how these issues have come to dominate contemporary global fiction as well. Through close, imaginative readings Jay analyzes the intersecting histories of colonialism, decolonization, and globalization engaged by an array of texts from Africa, Europe, South Asia, and the Americas, including Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Vikram Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Mohsin Hamid's Moth Smoke, and Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness. A timely intervention in the most exciting debates within literary studies, Global Matters is a comprehensive guide to the transnational nature of Anglophone literature today and its relationship to the globalization of Western culture.

Sampath Chawla, a young postal worker who never feels as though he fits into the small Indian town into which he is born, one day climbs up a tree, only to become a famous holy man

This book is the first comparative analysis of a new generation of diasporic Anglophone South Asian women novelists including Kiran Desai, Tahmima Anam, Monica Ali, Kamila Shamsie and Jhumpa Lahiri from a feminist perspective. It charts the significant changes these writers have produced in postcolonial and contemporary women’s fiction since the late 1990s. Paying careful attention to the authors’ distinct subcontinental backgrounds of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka – as well as India - this study destabilises the central place given to fiction focused on India. It broadens the customary focus on diasporic writers’ metropolitan contexts, illuminates how these transnational, female-authored literary texts challenge national assumptions and considers the ways in which this new configuration of transnational, feminist writers produces a postcolonial feminist discourse, which differs from Anglo-American feminism.

Written in vivid narrative and chiselled prose, Bye-Bye Blackbird explores the lives of the outsiders seeking to forge a new identity in an alien society. Set against England's green and grisly landscape, enigmatic and attractive to some, depressing and nauseating to others, it is a story of everyday heroism against subtle oppression, crumbling traditions and homesickness. 'Characters grow with life, the scenes are delicately painted and the nuances of changing mood skilfully transmitted.' — Hindu 'More than a novel, it is a psychological study of the love-hate relationship the immigrants have towards their country of adoption.' — Indian Express

“Postliberalization Indian Novels in English: Politics of Global Reception and Awards” is a critical handbook that focuses on trends in contemporary Indian novels and discusses the global reception of these works. The volume provides a systematic approach to the study of Indian novelists that have not been (with certain exceptions) extensively examined.