Postmodern Indian English Fiction: Some Perspectives
Contents: Preface. 1. Colonialism within colonialism: A study of Kale\'s Against all odds/Malti Agarwal. 2. The Novels of Shobha De: a speculum of feminine diallage/Anita Myles. 3. Postmodern reading of Sudha Murhy\'s Dollar Bahu/Beena Agarwal. 4. Shifting identities: re-invention of the self in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni\'s the mistress of spices/Devasree Chakravarti and G.A. Ghanshyam. 5. Forms of hybrid consciousness and female bonding in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni\'s sister of my heart/Anu Celly Narula. 6. Coming home: passage from anglophilia to indocentrism in Amitav Ghosh\'s Th shadow lines/Pinaki Roy. 7. Postmodern Indian fiction in English: narrative strategy in Vikram Chandra\'s love and longing in Bombay/Bashabi Gogoi. 8. Creating a hyperreal world: Ghosh and Adiga/Smriti Singh. 9. Dislocation and dispossession in Kiran Desai\'s the inheritance of loss/Abha Shyukla Kaushik. 10. Mahaswethas Devi\'s victim consciousness: a perspective/M. Umar...
It is difficult to define the term postmodernism in terms of exact scope, characteristics or values. It can be said that postmodernists are more concerned with difference plurality textuality and scepticism in place of identity, unity, authority and certainty. Literature being a documentation of social realities this trend is discernible in the works of postmodern writer also.
Indian English literature has come to occupy the centre stage in the world of English literature with the emergence of writers like Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, Aravind Adiga, Kiran Desai etc., who have won international critical acclaim. There are a host of other writers like Arun Joshi, Vikram Seth, Khushwant Singh, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Chetan Bhagat, Githa Hariharan, Shobha De, Mahashweta Devi, Chitra Banerjee Divakarun, Vikram Chandra, Manju Kapur, etc., who have carved a niche for themselves in the field of literature through their notable constitution. These writers have captured the cultural diversity, social dichotomy, ethnic multiplicity, clashes between the traditional and contemporary, Eastern and Western ideologies and other such issues which rock the Indian society. They explore the problems and possibilities engendered by the prevailing social realities negotiating and problematizing issues of gender, identity, cultural purity and history through their characters. (jacket)
