Critical Essays on Post-Colonial Literature (Hardbound - 2012)

This book Critical Essays on Post-Colonial Literature, is about Post-Colonial Studies. It attempts to analyze Post-colonial poetry, Caribbean poetry, Indian English poetry, Canadian fiction, Indian English fiction, short-story and drama. It deals with the question of identity of emigrant writers across the globe. Some of the outstanding Post-colonial writers and Indian English writers like Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott; Booker Laureates, Arundhati Roy, Margaret Atwood and Yann Martel; Commonwealth Prize Winners, Vikram Chandra and Manju Kapur and a host of Sahitya Akademi Award Winners like Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, Kamala Das, A.K. Ramanujan, Shiv K. Kumar, Keki N. Daruwalla, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, and Ruskin Bond, have been discussed with insight and precision. Above all, the book brings out the perspectives of Post-colonial studies across the globe.

Six new chapters have been added to this (revised and enlarged) edition in order to update the book as many things have happened in Post-colonial literature since its first edition came out. Two chapters are devoted to Post-colonial studies, one chapter to Canadian literature, two chapters to Indian English fiction and finally, an interview with the well-known Sahitya Akademi Award winning poet, Keki N. Daruwalla. An updated bibliography is included in the end, both by way of acknowledgement and necessity to bring to the notice of readers, the materials available in the field.

This is a well researched and useful book for teachers and students of English literature and researchers in this field, in India and abroad.

Bijay Kumar Das, Ph.D., D.Litt., is a contributor to The Encyclopaedia of World Literature in the 20th Century (New York). He has published a number of reference books which include Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (2010, 2012); The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra (2009); Form and Meaning in Mahesh Dattani’s Plays (2008); Critical Essays on Postcolonial Literature (2007); Post-Modern Indian English Literature (2006); A Handbook of Translation Studies (2005, 2008); Critical Essays on Poetry (2003); A Handbook of Communication Skills and Functional English (2002); Shiv K. Kumar as a Post-Colonial Poet (2001); A Reader’s Guide to Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets (1999); Aspects of Commonwealth Literature (1995); The Horizon of Nissim Ezekiel’s Poetry (1995); Perspectives on Indian English Poetry Criticism (1993); and Modern Indian English Poetry (1992). He has edited four reference books: Comparative Literature (2000); Perspective on the Poetry of R. Parthasarathy (1998); Contemporary Indo-English Poetry (1992); and New Readings in Indian English Literature (2011). He has also co-edited one reference book entitled Studies in Postcolonial Literature (2007) and several textbooks including Nineteenth Century English Poetry (OUP, 1992, 1998). He has successfully guided 19 Ph.D. scholars and was the Chief Editor of The Indian Journal of English Studies for three years (2006-08). He is the Editor of The Critical Endeavour. Formerly a Reader in English at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, Dr. Das is now a Professor of English at Burdwan University, Burdwan (West Bengal).