topics: |  lit | critic | indian-english

A view from the outside

An external view of Indian literature.  The novelsts chosen have lived
mostly outside India, and most of the themes also look at India from the
outside.  Some choices are rather surprising, such as Rushdie's collection
of stories, "East, West", over his earlier landmark novels.  Particularly
remarkable is the absence of Amitabha Ghosh.  The work of Jhumpa Lahiri or
Bharati Mukherjee are situated in the west, and Anil's Ghost and The Guide
has protagonists returned from the west.  Leaving aside Tagore, who never
wrote English fiction, ten of the fourteen authors have lived most of their
lives outside india (Rao, Hosain, Sidhwa, Mukherjee, Rushdie, Selvadurai,
Mistry, Ondaatje, Lahiri, Suri).  Some, such as Jhumpa Lahiri, have never
even lived in south asia.

From the other side of the coin, except for RK Narayan and Arundhati Roy,
the literature mentioned here has perhaps seen much less readership in
India compared to Indian literatures in other languages. 

While the readership for English literature in India has been rising
steadily furled by "english-medium" schools and increasing number of
parents who speak English to their children, I wonder if the pan-Indian
readership for a best-selling author like Rushdie would exceed the sales
of a widely read vernacular novelist such as shIrShendu mukhopAdhyAy in
bengali.

[on this last point, i have a request: If you have some book sales figures,
please mail me some pointers!] 

Contents

Introduction 3
  1  The Fiction of Rabindranath Tagore: Quartet (1915) 11
  2  Raja Rao: Kanthapura (1938) 27
  3  Khushwant Singh: Train to Pakistan (1956) 47
  4  R. K. Narayan: The Guide (1958) 59
  5  Attia Hosain: Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961) 75 
  6  Anita Desai: Games at Twilight (1978) 87
  7  Bapsi Sidhwa: Cracking India (1988) 99
  8  Bharati Mukherjee: Jasmine (1989) 111
  9  Salman Rushdie: East, West (1994) 129
 10  Shyam Selvadurai: Funny Boy (1994) 147
 11  Rohinton Mistry: A Fine Balance (1996) 155
 12  Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things (1997) 165
 13  Michael Ondaatje: Anil's Ghost (2000) 177
 14  Jhumpa Lahiri: Interpreter of Maladies (2000) 195
 15  Manil Suri: The Death of Vishnu (2001) 205
 Glossary of Terms 219
 Index 243