During the seventy years of its effective history Indian Writing in English crossed many miles stones and has come to be finally accepted as a major literature of the world. Having won almost every important literary prize in the recent few years, IWE has become immensely popular with the common international readers and critics alike. If its being prescribed for study in universities across the world is any indication, the place of IWE in the canon is secure forever.
This anthology of critical articles attempts to evaluate some of the major Indian poets and novelists and their influential works from refreshingly new perspectives – historical, socio-economic, existential, mythological, philosophical-religious and environmental.
The writers studied here include Anand, Narayan, Raja Rao, Malgonkar, Bhattacharya, Joshi, Desai, Markandaya, Sahgal, Ezekiel and Ramanujan. An interesting addition to this volume are a couple of articles on the Diaspora writers such Rohinton Mistry and the South African Indian poets and novelists.
It is hoped that this book will prove itself highly useful to all who are seriously interested in Indian Writing in English.
Rajeshwar Mittapalli is an Assistant Professor of English at Kakatiya University, Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, India. His published works of criticism include The Novels of Wole Soyinka (1990) and Indian Women Novelists and Psychoanalysis (1998). Apart from several volumes in this series of anthologies, he has edited Post-modernism and English Literature (1999), Lifescapes (1999), Indian Fiction in English (1999), The Novels of Anita Desai (2000), Kamala Das: A Critical Spetrum (2000) and IT, Globalization and the Teaching of English (2000). Another dozen books are in various stages of preparation.
Dr. Mittapalli is presently the editor of The Atlantic Literary Review published from New Delhi. In the past he had been the Associate Editor of the prestigious Kakatiya Journal of English Studies for several years.
So far he has published 28 articles on Indian, African and American fiction and ELT in such reputed journal as New Quest, Indian Literature, The Journal of indian Writing in English, Commonwealth Quarterly, The Commonwealth Review, Revaluations, Triveni and College English Review.
Pier Paolo Piciucco has a Ph.D. on “Mythical Heritage of Female Characters in Indian English Fiction” from the University of Bologna, Italy.
He has published articles in The Journal of Indian Writing in English, In-Between, The Journal of Literature and Aesthetics, Englishes, Africa America Asia Australia, Linea d’Ombra, Il Tolomeo and L’Indice.
His articles have also been included in volumes such as Cross-Cultural Voices, Routes of the Roots: Geography in the English-Speaking Countries (both by Bulzoni, Rome), Arundhati Roy: the Novelist Extraordinary (Prestige, New Delhi) and Indian Writings in English Volume 7 (Atlantic, New Delhi).
He collaborates with the Italian academic Institute CSAE (Centre for the Study of Literatures and Cultures of Emerging Areas) and for them he has edited and translated into Italian a bilingual volume of Indian short stories entitled, Feminine, Plural.
He is presently working on South African Theatre as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Turin.
