The present work contains an in-depth analytical study of some aspects of considerably recent Indian history in six works of Indian English fiction, viz. Train to Pakistan, The Dark Dancer, Sunlight on a Broken Column, A Bend in the Ganges, Azadi, and Midnight’s Children. These novels, written over a period of a quarter of a century, have been so selected as to afford us an understanding of the most important historical events of our near past from varying perspectives, which were largely determined by each writer’s distance from the events and his perception of their import.
All the novelists included in this book have chosen Indian history as a co-ordinate in their fictional art. The facts themselves have been repeatedly given to us by novelists as well as historians; it is in the specific orientation given to facts that the distinctive genius of each novelist under study lies. Each writer, making fiction “take off from history”, devises his own “literary aesthetics of truth-telling”.
The novels here are all imaginative depictions of crises in recent Indian history but the time span covered by each varies. One event common to all is the partition of the country which each writer has approached from a different angle of vision and given a distinctive treatment.
The book will be useful for English literature, particularly Indian English literature, and researchers in these fields.
Prof. (Dr.) Reena Mitra, M.Phil., Ph.D. (English), a gold medallist from the University of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, has taught in her alma mater itself and in Christ Church P.G. College, Kanpur, for a total period of over four decades. Her area of interest is literatures in English, and primarily, Indian Writing in English. She has written two internationally acclaimed books as sole author, namely, Indian English Fiction: History as a Mode of Literature and Critical Response to Literatures in English. She has also edited three international anthologies of essays on Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India and Sally Morgan’s My Place, respectively, contributing exhaustive introductory chapters to each of these compilations.
To add to her achievements, Dr. Reena Mitra has numerous research papers published/ presented at various international and national conferences and seminars. She also has to her credit, quality research work on The Indian English Fiction of Bhabani Bhattacharya; Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, and Manohar Malgonkar’s A Bend in the Ganges: A Comparative Study; and Minority Fiction: An Ingress into the Parsi Sensibility. She is, at present, Professor of English at Amity University, Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow).
