It is a matter of pleasure and pride to note that Indian English Literature has been making conspicuous progress in recent years. While some celebrated Indian novelists like Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga have won the Booker Prize, a host of others have won accolades and wide readership in India and abroad. The present anthology aims at presenting an in-depth study of twenty established as well as upcoming writers including: Jayanta Mahapatra, Eunice de Souza, Arun Kolatkar, G.S. Sarat Chandra, Romen Basu, Raja Rao, Chaman Nahal, Ruskin Bond, Arun Joshi, Amitav Ghosh, Meera Syal, Habib Tanvir, Badal Sircar, Chandrasekhar Kambar, Girish Karnad and H.S. Shivaprakash.
The topics covered in this anthology include a critique of modernist Indian English poetry; thematic concerns in Jayanta Mahapatra’s poetry; feminine sensibility in the poetry of Eunice de Souza; East-west encounter in Romen Basu’s fiction; alienation and quest for identity in Ruskin Bond’s The Room on the Roof; eclecticism, diasporic displacement, nostalgia and exile in Amitav Ghosh’s fiction; and other themes like human suffering, poverty, violence, loneliness, faith, skepticism, and pangs of Partition that form the subject matter of Indian English literature in general.
The five articles dealing with drama, included in this anthology take up theatrical assumptions; a rejection of Western theatrical modes; experimentation; satirical and utopian elements in two of Circar’s fantastical plays; and the plight of marginalised and oppressed women.
Since most of the authors included in the present volume for discussion are prescribed in the English syllabi in various Indian universities and studied for M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees, it is hoped that teachers, students and research scholars will find this volume extremely useful.
Basavaraj Naikar, M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt. (California) Professor and Chairman, Department of English, Karnatak University, Dharwad (India), is a bilingual creative writer and critic in Kannada and English. His critical works in English include Sarvajna: The Poet Omniscient of Karnataka, Critical Articles on Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Shakespeare’s Last Plays: A Study in Epic Affirmation, Indian English Literature (9 Vols), Indian Response to Shakespeare, The Folk Theatre of North Karnataka, Kanakadasa: The Golden Servant of Lord Hari, Critical Response to Indian English Literature, Perspectives on Commonwealth Literature, Indian Literature in English Translation, Glimpses of Indian Literature in English Translation, and The Dramatic Imagination. His English Translations are: Musings of Sarvajna, Fall of Kalyana, Sangya Balya: A Tale of Love and Betrayal and The Holy Water.
His creative writing comprises of The Thief of Nagarahalli and Other Stories (short listed for the Commonwealth Fiction Prize for the Best First Book from Eurasia in 2000), The Rebellious Rani of Belavadi and Other Stories, The Sun Behind the Cloud (A historical novel about 1857 Mutiny), Light in the House (A Philosophical novel about a Muslim saint) and The Queen of Kittur (A historical novel about Rani Chennamma).
He is the recipient of Gulbarga University Award for Translation, Olive Reddick Award from ASRC Hyderabad, the Award from the Gemini Academy, Panipat and Vasudeva Bhpalam Award from Bengaluru.
His research interests include Indian English, American, Postcolonial, Anglo-Indian and Comparative Literatures, Shakespeare and Translation Studies.
