3 Review(s)

The papers collected in this anthology represent a wide spectrum of critical interests of scholars specialising in Indian Fiction in English which has of late established a powerful and pervasive presence on the world literary scene. The widely divergent themes of the third generation Indian novelists including especially immigrant experience, feminist concerns and gender issues, familial, social, psychological and philosophical problems characterising contemporary Indian life and the major debates centred round Indian fiction in English, besides the innovative techniques, have all been discussed in this volume from refreshingly new perspectives. Among the contributors to this volume are some of the most respected scholars: John Thieme (England), Sandra Ponzanesi (Netherlands), Shaul Bassi (Italy), Basavaraj Naikar (India), Uma Parameswaran (Canada), Mary Conde (England), Christopher Rollason (France), Chandra Holm (Switzerland), Joel Kuortti (Finland) and Alessandra Contenti (Italy). Among the novelists discussed are: Salman Rushdie, Shashi Deshpande, Bharati Mukherjee, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy. About the Author Rajeshwar Mittapalli is an 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. Apart from Volume-1 in this series and several volumes in another series entitled Indian Writings in English, he has edited Post-modernism and English Literature, Indian Fiction in English, The Novels of Anita Desai, The Novels of Mulk Raj Anand, The Fiction of Raja Rao and Modern American Literature. Dr. Mittapalli is currently the Editor of The Atlantic Literary Review published from New Delhi. He was for several years the Associate Editor of Kakatiya Journal of English Studies. He has published a number of articles on Indian, African and American fiction in such well-known journals as New Quest, Indian Literature, The Journal of Indian Writing in English, Commonwealth Quarterly, The Commonwealth Review and Revaluations. Some of these articles have been repeatedly anthologised. Pier Paolo Piciucco has a Ph.D. in “Mythical Heritage of Female Characters in Indian English Fiction” from the University of Bologna, Italy. He has published articles in The Journal of Indian Writing in English, In-Between, The Journal of Literature and Aesthetics, Englishes, Africa-America-Asia-Australia, Linea d’Ombra, Il Tolomeo and L’Indice. His articles have also appeared in anthologies such as Cross-Cultural Voices, Routes of the Roots: Geography and Literature in the English-Speaking Countries (Rome), Arundhati Roy: Novelist Extraordinary (New Delhi) and Indian Writings in English, Volume-7 (New Delhi). He collaborates with the Italian academic institute CSAE (Centre for the Study of Literatures and Cultures of Emerging Areas) and for them he has edited and translated into Italian a bilingual volume of Indian short stories entitled Feminine Plural. For Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi he has edited with Rajeshwar Mittapalli Studies in Indian Writing in English, Volume-1 and Kamala Das: A Critical Spectrum. He is currently working on South African Theatre as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Turin, Italy. Table of Contents 1. The Image of New Woman in Anand’s Gauri 2. R.K. Narayan: A Novelist Committed to the Hindu Ideals and Beliefs 3. Gandhian Ideology: A Study of Raja Rao’s Kanthapura 4. The Theme of Marriage in Raja Rao’s The Serpent and the Rope 5. Manohar Malgonkar: The Novelist as Historian 6. The Image of Modern Indian Woman in Bhattacharya’s Music for Mohini 7. Bhabani Bhattacharya’s He who Rides a Tiger: A Socio-economic Perspective 8. Pestilence and Endurance: A Study of Bhabani Bhattacharya’s He Who Rides a Tiger 9. Mystic Value of Aurum for Tout le Monde: A Study of Bhabani Bhattacharya’s A Goddess Named Gold 10. Arun Joshi’s Fictional Forte 11. The Dialectics of Marital Polarisation in Anita Desai’s Cry, the Peacock 12. Anita Desai’s Where Shall We Go this Summer? As a Critique of Existentialism 13. Myth as Macro-structure: A Reading of Kamala Markandaya’s A Silence of Desire and Nayantara Sahgal’s The Day in Shadow 14. Rural India as Reflected in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve 15. A Vision of Life: Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve 16. A Pleasure City: The New Frontier 17. Bombay under Canadian Eyes: Visions of the Indian Metropolis in the Fiction of Rohinton Mistry 18. The Poetic Cosmos of A.K. Ramanujan 19. Kinship with Nature in Ramanujan’s Poetry 20. Social Concern in Ramanujan’s Poetry: A Note 21. A Genealogical Survey of South African Indian Literature in English