The Fictional World of Shashi Deshpande: A Critical Study (Hardbound - 2019)

Shashi Deshpande is one of India’s most distinguished authors, and the winner of the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award, and Padma Sri Award. In Indian English fiction, she has a distinctive position as a writer of women-centric novels, with a special drive to unveil the gender imbalance in society. She ventures to explore the life of Indian women with socio-cultural and psycho-ethical paradigms of human existence.

Exploring the theme of woman’s subjugation in our male-dominated society, her novels reveal a woman’s capacity to assert her own rights and individuality, and become aware of her potential as a human being, like Saru in The Dark Holds No Terrors. Trapped between tradition and modernity, her sensitive heroines are fully conscious of being victims of gross gender discrimination prevalent in a conservative society. Some of her protagonists, like Jaya in That Long Silence, trace their passage in the maze of doubts, fears and uncertainties.

The book seeks to study the feminist perspective in Shashi Deshpande’s novels. It reveals Deshpande’s sincerity and ability in voicing the concerns of the urban educated middle-class woman. Her writings not only expand our understanding of Indian women’s literature, or of representations of women’s agency, but also enhance our comprehension of the complex relationships that mediate community and tradition, culture and nation, and of Indian English Literature as a whole.

The book will be useful for the students and teachers of English Literature, Indian English Literature, particularly fiction, and researchers in these fields.

Dr Binod Kumar Roy, M.A. Ph.D., is working as Assistant Professor and Head, Department of English in R.S.S. College, Chochahan, B.R.A. Bihar University. He has to his credit many articles which have been published in books and journals of great repute. He has presented papers in several prestigious seminars and conferences. His areas of interest are Indian English Literature and Gender Studies.