Anita Desai’s work represents a unique blending of the Indian and the western. Her novels catch the bewilderment of the individual psyche confronted with the overbearing socio-cultural environment and the ever-beckoning modern promise of self-gratification and self-fulfilment. In the face of this dual onslaught, her protagonists, male or female — Maya, Sita, Monisha and Amla; Sarah, Nanda and Raka; Bim and Tara; Devan, Baumgartner — are seen poised rentalizingly at different junctures of the philosophic spectrum.
Applying sociological, psychoanalytic, structural and other approaches of formal textual analysis, the essays in the present anthology take a fresh look at established works, revealing aspects of study hitherto unexplored, offer critically insightful probes into individual novels and explore the deployment of images, symbols and other poetic devices, besides diverse narrative strategies.
An indispensable source-book for students, researchers and teachers of Indian English and Commonwealth Literature in general and fiction and Anita Desai in particular.
An insightful companion for research in sociology and women-studies.
Dr. Manmohan K. Bhatnagar is Professor, Department of English, M.D. University, Rohtak (Haryana), India. A distinguished scholar and a veteran teacher of more than two decades’ standing, he has been Chairman, Department of English, M.D. University, Rohtak and also Chairman, State Inter-University Common Syllabi Committee in English of Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra and M.D. University, Rohtak.
Having been selected for the prestigious Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellow-ship, Professor Bhatnagar has been a U.G.C.-empanelled Resource Person and part of the Guest Faculty at a number of U.G.C-sponsored Refresher Courses for College Lecturers. He has also chaired individual sessions at National Seminars. He has been a U.G.C. Fellow at Panjab University, Chandigarh and a U.G.C. Research Associate at University of Poona, Poona. Currently, he is engaged in working as Principal Investigator in a Major U.G.C. Project on Indian English Fiction.
Professor Bhatnagar’s publications include, besides a number of research articles in prestigious journals in India and abroad, Political Consciousness in Indian English Writing, Perspectives and The Fiction of Nayantara Sahgal. His areas of interest are: Literary Theory, Comparative Literature, Commonwealth and Indian English Literature and Third World Fiction.
Dr. M. Rajeshwar is an Assistant Professor of English at Kakatiya University, Warangal, Andhra Pradesh. His published works of criticism include The Novels of Wole Soyinka (1990) and Indian Women Novelists and Psychoanalysis (1998). The books he has edited are : Post-modernism and English Literature (1999), Lifescapes : Telugu Short Stories by Naveen and Indian Fiction in English. He has been the Associate Editor of the prestigious Kakatiya Journal of English Studies for several years. He has published 26 articles on Indian, African and American fiction in such reputed journals as New Quest, Indian Literature, The Journal of Indian Writing in English, Commonwealth Quarterly, The Commonwealth Review, Revaluations and Triveni. Many of these articles have been repeatedly anthologized.
Dr. Rajeshwar is currently working on a project entitled “The Discovery of Regional Language Fiction : A Study of Ten Major Telugu Novels” as part of a fellowship awarded by the Department of Culture, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, New Delhi.
