The Nation of India in Contemporary Indian Literature

The Nation of India in Contemporary Indian Literature

by Anna Guttman, Ph.D.

Palgrave Macmillan

October 2007

978-1403983909

This book discusses selected works by six contemporary Indian novelists writing in English - Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Nayantara Sahgal, Arundhati Roy, Ruchir Joshi and Rupa Bajwa - all of whom have made the Indian nation a central theme in their fiction.All these writers respond, in varying ways, to the idea of India as united in diversity, a construct most readily associated with the nationalist vision of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister.In considering India's past and looking towards the future, they struggle with and attempt to extend the available language of cultural diversity.

Review

"This is a solid and intriguing book that will appeal to scholars and students in South Asian literature, postcolonial studies, and contemporary literature in general. It is an innovative and interesting notion to approach South Asian novels through the lens of a Nehruvian-inspired notion of what India should be. As Guttman argues, the questions this raises are quite lively ones in India and Pakistan today, and by analogy are significant throughout the postcolonial world. Guttman draws on important sources and offers a new ways to read individual texts by such authors as Seth, Rushdie, Sahgal, Roy, Joshi, and Bajwa."

- John Hawley, University of Santa Clara