South Asian Literature, Culture and Society: A Critical Rumination (Hardbound - 2021)

With its peculiarities, socio-political and religious similarities and differences, South Asia, as a region carries many significant characteristics. Through this book an attempt has been made to showcase the nuances of South Asian literature, culture, and society. It is an attempt to reflect and reverberate varied aspects of the subcontinent. It tries to give a global perspective where readers, scholars, and academicians can read, understand, realize, and appreciate the socio-cultural and literary traits of South Asia.

The book has been divided into two parts. The first part, namely “Mapping South Asian Literature” contains twenty-nine research articles which vividly explicate some noteworthy literary works of this region. The second part of this volume, namely “Glimpses of South Asian Culture and Society” consists of eight scholarly articles which define a few traits of South Asian society and culture.

Despite many socio-cultural, political, religious, and economic conflicts, South Asian countries are united by a cultural proximity, and this book conforms to the notion and endeavours to explore the literary and socio-culture landscape of South Asia. The book discusses the writings in English and that in the native tongues of prominent authors such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Amitav Ghosh, Kamala Markandaya, Namita Gokhale, Mohsin Hamid, Ashapurna Debi, Nirmal Bose, Orijit Sen, Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar, and Taslima Nasrin. It includes essays not just on the novelists, but also on poets like Kamala Das and Eunice de Souza, and playwrights like Asif Currimbhoy.

Second part of the book goes beyond literature to take up issues concerning culture and society, such as archaeology, religion, mythology, health, gender, ecology, modernity, and tribes.

Dr. Goutam Karmakar, M.A. (English), PGDFCS (Post-Graduate Diploma in Folklore and Culture Studies), Ph.D. (English), is an Assistant Professor of English at Barabazar Bikram Tudu Memorial College, Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, West Bengal, India. He has completed his Ph.D. from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Durgapur (NITD), West Bengal, India. His essays, research papers, book reviews and poems have been published in many reputed international journals. He has taken interviews of many notable Indian poets writing in English. He has edited four critical books on Indian poetry in English. His latest anthology on Indian poetry in English has come out from Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi in 2020. He seeks interest in Indian Writings in English, South Asian Literature, Film Studies, Science Fiction, Ecocritical Studies, Dalit literature, Cultural Studies, Trauma and Memory studies. He can be reached at [email protected].