Five Indian Women Novelists

About the book: The book Indian Women Novelists in English: Art and Vision is a volume of twenty five research articles on contemporary Indian women novelists and their works ranging from Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Manju Kapur, Shobhaa De, Meena Alexander, Githa Hariharan, Arundhati Roy to the younger generation of novelists Anita Nair, Kiran Desai and Jhumpa Lahiri along with two less explored novelists Rita Garg and Nayeema Mahjoor. Three regional writers- Sarah Joseph, Qurratulain Hyder and Mahasweta Devi are also part of this volume, though their write-ups are in regional languages, yet their translated works in English have earned wide popularity. The volume with its diversity of topics will instill knowledge into the critical minds and open many unopened doors from where many unexplored regions of knowledge will be revisited. About the Editor: Dipak Giri- M.A. (Double), B.Ed. - is a Ph. D. Research Scholar in Raiganj University, Raiganj, Uttar Dinajpur (W.B.). He is working as an Assistant Teacher in Katamari High School (H.S.), Cooch Behar, West Bengal. He is an Academic Counsellor in Netaji Subhas Open University, Cooch Behar College Study Centre, Cooch Behar, West Bengal. He was formerly Part-Time Lecturer in Cooch Behar College, Vivekananda College and Thakur Panchanan Mahila Mahavidyalaya, West Bengal and worked as a Guest Lecturer in Dewanhat College, West Bengal. He has the credit of qualifying U.G.C.-N.E.T. two times. He has attended seminars on national and state levels sponsored by U.G.C. Along with this book on Indian women novelists in English, he has also edited four books: Indian English Drama: Themes and Techniques, Indian English Novel: Styles and Motives, Postcolonial English Literature: Theory and Practice and New Woman in Indian Literature: From Covert to Overt. He is a well-known academician and has published many scholarly research articles in books and journals of both national and international repute. His area of studies includes Post-Colonial Literature, Indian Writing in English, Dalit Literature, Feminism and Gender Studies.

Contributed essays.

The result of extensive archival recovery work, Ellen Brinks's study fills a significant gap in our understanding of women's literary history of the South Asian subcontinent under colonialism and of Indian women's contributions and responses to developing cultural and political nationalism. As Brinks shows, the invisibility of Anglophone Indian women writers cannot be explained simply as a matter of colonial marginalization or as a function of dominant theoretical approaches that reduce Indian women to the status of figures or tropes. The received narrative that British imperialism in India was perpetuated with little cultural contact between the colonizers and the colonized population is complicated by writers such as Toru Dutt, Krupabai Satthianadhan, Pandita Ramabai, Cornelia Sorabji, and Sarojini Naidu. All five women found large audiences for their literary works in India and in Great Britain, and all five were also deeply rooted in and connected to both South Asian and Western cultures. Their works created new zones of cultural contact and exchange that challenge postcolonial theory's tendencies towards abstract notions of the colonized women as passive and of English as a de-facto instrument of cultural domination. Brinks's close readings of these texts suggest new ways of reading a range of issues central to postcolonial studies: the relationship of colonized women to the metropolitan (literary) culture; Indian and English women's separate and joint engagements in reformist and nationalist struggles; the 'translatability' of culture; the articulation strategies and complex negotiations of self-identification of Anglophone Indian women writers; and the significance and place of cultural difference.

"Bringing together the work of five highly accomplished contemporary Indian women writers - Mrinal Pande, Saniya, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Vaidehi, and B. M. Zuhara - this collection of novellas from five Indian languages revolves around the lives of women from various walks of life. With the novellas translated in English for the first time, the book includes a critical introduction by Uma Chakravarti." "This book will be of value not only to general readers interested in Indian writing in translation, but also to students of modern Indian literature, gender studies, comparative literature, and cultural studies." --Book Jacket.

Contributed essays.