The Novels of Anita Desai: A Critical Study (Hardbound - 2013)

Anita Desai’s work represents a unique blending of the Indian and the Western. Her novels catch the bewilderment of the individual psyche confronted with the overbearing socio-cultural environment and the ever-beckoning modern promise of self-gratification and self-fulfilment. In the face of this dual onslaught, her protagonists—male or female—Maya, Sita, Monisha and Amla; Sarah, Nanda and Raka; Bim and Tara; Devan, Baumgartner—are seen poised tantalizingly at different junctures of the philosophic spectrum.

Applying sociological, psychoanalytic, structural and other approaches of formal textual analysis, the essays in the present anthology take a fresh look at established works, revealing aspects of study hitherto unexplored, offer critically insightful probes into individual novels and explore the deployment of images, symbols and other poetic devices, besides diverse narrative strategies.

It is an indispensable sourcebook for students, researchers and teachers of Indian English and Commonwealth literature in general and fiction of Anita Desai in particular.

The book also makes an insightful companion for research in sociology and women studies.

M.K. Bhatnagar, Professor, Department of English, M.D. University, Rohtak (Haryana), India had been a distinguished scholar and a veteran teacher. He served as Chairman, Department of English, M.D. University, Rohtak and also Chairman, State Inter-University Common Syllabi Committee (English) of Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra and M.D. University, Rohtak.

Professor Bhatnagar’s publications include, besides a number of research articles in prestigious journals in India and abroad, Political Consciousness in Indian English Writing and The Novels of Nayantara Sahgal. His areas of interest are: Literary Theory, Comparative Literature, Commonwealth and Indian English Literature and Third World Fiction.

M. Rajeshwar is Associate Professor of English at Kakatiya University, Warangal (Andhra Pradesh), India. His published works of criticism include The Novels of Wole Soyinka and Indian Women Novelists and Psychoanalysis. He has edited several anthologies of literary essays. Some of them are: Post-modernism and English Literature; Indian Fiction in English; Studies in Indian Writing in English (Volume 1 & 2); Post-Independence Indian English Fiction; Commonwealth Fiction: Twenty-first Century Readings; Modern American Literature and IT Revolution, and Globalization and the Teaching of English.

He has published a large number of articles on Indian, African and American fiction and ELT in reputed journals like New Quest; ARTS Research; Indian Literature; The Journal of Indian Writing in English; Commonwealth Quarterly; The Commonwealth Review and Revaluations.