3 Review(s)

The present thematic and comparative study was an attempt to re-claim the history of millions of victims of war and violence, and thereby to contribute to the debate about the representation of history in literature. Literary narratives unearth the hidden individual narratives of trauma and violence; bring them to the surface; give them a voice and break the silence in the collective sphere. Literature neither negates nor is antithetical to history. At best, it is supplementary and demands readers to universalize, empathize, visualize and imagine than being merely informed. Literary narratives on and about historical events are as crucially important as are mainstream written histories. If the objective of the history is to teach and inform, then literature rouses and intimately disturbs. Literature as an emotional chronicle is a history of the indescribable and in many ways a quest to impart sentiments rather than information. Given the scope of interdisciplinarity, the time has ripened for an academic collaboration between a literary writer and a historian, which would culminate into a venerable and protracted tradition of writing history.