Looking for Home: Journey and Boundary in Postmodern Texts (Hardbound - 2020)

Home has always been a centre of contention, contestation, and construction. It has never been a constant—a truth that contemporary life asserts more strongly than ever. In order to create a home people have moved across several boundaries, and to protect the home-construction people have created a number of boundaries. This book looks at the former—the journey for finding or creating a home and how the journey and the course often brings the migrants to or leaves them in problematic spaces. These people remain migrants, or immigrants, or refugees, or such. They are rarely integrated and can rarely find integration within. Identity for them remains an irreconcilable issue. History bears witness, but literature captures the trauma, the agony, and the process that seldom ends in closure. This book looks at a handful of narratives belonging to the time considered to be postmodern. Along with the people who seek home, there are texts or stories or characters that also migrate. This book looks at a few such migrations. The latter exploration is tentative and cursory. Hopefully, all these journeys shall open the space for discussions on the ever-relevant home issue. Initiating such deliberations is the primary aim of this book.

Siddhartha Biswas, B.A. (Presidency College), M.A. (University of Calcutta), Ph.D. (University of Calcutta), is currently an Associate Professor in English at the Department of English, University of Calcutta. He has also taught as an Assistant Professor in English at the Department of English, St Paul’s Cathedral Mission College, Kolkata, for 17 years before joining the University.

His research interests include Modern and Post-modern Theatre, Translation Studies, and Popular Culture. His doctoral work was on the screenplays of Harold Pinter. He has written a number of articles in the reputed journals in India and abroad. His authored books include Theatre Theory and Performance: A Critical Interrogation (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, U.K.) among others. He has also translated a number of works among which his translations of The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night (Monfakira) may be mentioned.