The Emergency and the Indian English Novel(English, Electronic book text, Merivirta Raita Marjaana)
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This book examines the memory of the National Emergency (1975-1977) in Indian English novels of 1980s and 1990s. It looks at five major, award-winning works: Salman Rushdie's `Booker of Bookers' Midnight's Children (1981), Nayantara Sahgal's Rich Like Us (1985), Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel (1989), and Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey (1991) and A Fine Balance (1995), to show how memories and narratives of the emergency period were constructed in Indian English literature. The author states that these Emergency novels are parallel histories, countering the official narrative presented by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her government. Read in conjunction with other representations of the period - government white papers and Indira Gandhi's speeches, examples of the post-Emergency literature, memoirs, biographies and historiography - these novels show how this counter memory rescued what was silenced and forgotten, and gave voice to the victims and the sufferers. Freedom of speech and expression being one of the most important political debates in the recent years, this book is a timely and useful volume for scholars and researchers of English literature, media studies, cultural studies, political studies, sociology, post-colonial studies, general history and for general readers as well.