Indian Fiction and Films:: Rethinking History, Society and Culture (Hardbound - 2021)

About the Book :- The book attempts a re-evaluation of selected Indian fictional works and films in terms of their engagement with history, society, and culture. It seeks to establish how the writers’ and filmmakers’ concerns present facts, reframe the discourse, and disabuse the readers of long held notions and sentiments so that a proper understanding of Indian history, society, and culture comes about. Thus, inevitably marking a departure from and improving upon the usual critical practice of analysing literature and films within the artistic parameters, this book explores broad concerns, such as colonial history, Gandhian ideology, relevance of Bhakti Literature, globalization, gender, dowry system, inter-caste marriages, caste based discrimination, honour killings, subordination of the Dalits, socioeconomic disparities, transition of Indian society, multiculturalism, Bollywood, social responsibility, and hybrid identities of diasporic Indians as depicted in the works of Indian writers and film makers ranging from R.K. Narayan to Jeet Thayil and from Priyadarshan to Prakash Jha.

The book will be indubitably useful not just to the students and teachers of English literature, but even to scholars in other disciplines, such as history, sociology, cultural studies, gender studies, Dalit studies, and film studies.

About the Author :- Rajeshwar Mittapalli, Ph.D., is a Professor of English in Kakatiya University, Warangal, Telangana, India. He is the author of three acclaimed works of criticism entitled The Novels of Wole Soyinka, Indian Women Novelists and Psychoanalysis and TELUGU: Language and Literature. He has published more than 85 articles in India, USA, Spain, Italy, Hong Kong, South Africa, Germany, Portugal, Singapore, Thailand, and elsewhere in the world. He edited, often with European and American scholars, 25 anthologies of essays on a variety of literary subjects. These edited volumes include Modern Criticism (co-edited with Christopher Rollason, UK), V.S. Naipaul: Fiction and Travel Writing (co-edited with Michael Hensen, Germany), Salman Rushdie: New Critical Insights, vols. 1-2 (co-edited with Joel Kuortti, Finland), The Fiction of Raja Rao (co-edited with Pier Paolo Piciucco, Italy), Postcolonial Indian Fiction in English and Masculinity (co-edited with Letizia Alterno, UK), and The Male Empire Under the Female Gaze: The British Raj and the Memsahib brought out by the Amherst, NY based Cambria Press (co-edited with Susmita Roye, USA). Apart from these books he has also edited several volumes of the Atlantic Literary Review (quarterly) and Kakatiya Journal of English Studies (annual).