• ISBN13: 9780198099161
• Binding: Paperback
• Subject: English Literature
• Publisher: Oxford UP
• Publisher Imprint: Oxford UP
• Publication Date: January 1, 2014
• Pages: 288
• Original Price: INR 695.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 363 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): Asian / Indic and European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

A study of eight major contemporary Indian authors who write in English -- Arun Kolatkar, Keki N. Daruwalla, Amit Chaudhuri, Pankaj Mishra, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Tabish Khair, Susan Visvanathan, and Jeet Thayil -- this book offers a reading of their works with a focus on themes, formal characteristics, influences, etc. As Bruce King analyses aesthetic, social, psychological, and metaphysical dimensions of the work of these writers, certain recurring topics knit the chapters together: how modern Indian poetry in English differs from that of nationalist writers; the role modern Indian poetry played in establishing a literary tradition of depicting contemporary Indian life; and the mapping of actual places in India in contrast to the generalized spiritual India of the Brahmin nationalists. The book shows what later prose writers learned from the poets and the importance of location to the writers as well as the changing social, cultural, and political contexts of Indian literature.

Bruce King is a well-known scholar of seventeenth-century English literature and Commonwealth literature. He has held lectureships at Bristol University and the University of Ibadan and professorships at universities in Scotland, New Zealand, Canada, Israel, France, Nigeria, and the United States.