Issues of Identity in Indian English Fiction
Issues of Identity in Indian English Fiction

Author: H. S. Komalesha

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9783039111121

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Rapid developments in the fields of trade, market, commerce and telecommunication technologies, together with cultural confrontations at the global level are creating a paradigmatic shift in people's understanding of selfhood and identity. This book makes a serious attempt to trace and map out the making of contemporary post-national identities within the subcontinental cultural production of India and in its English Fiction. One of the structural ventures of this study is that these newer identities, which are basically fragmented, ruptured, hyphenated, and palimpsestic in nature, require new descriptions and new elaborations within the field of creative literature and literary criticism. In order to pursue its research on these lines, the present work contrasts the notion of subjecthood and identity with the earlier phases of Indian cultural imagination as represented in some of the pioneering works of Indian English Fiction that have now attained a canonical status. By analysing some of the predominant concerns that work as leitmotif in most of the Indian English novels, the book brings together and reinterprets some problematic concepts such as history, culture, religion, nation and nationalism and creates a theoretical axis upon which it charts insightful and engaging aspects of selfhood and identity.

Gendering the Narrative
Gendering the Narrative

Author: Nibedita Mukherjee

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2015-10-13

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 1443884677

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This volume brings together a number of recent critical essays on aspects of gender discourse visible in Indian English fiction. The articles included here address the multiple aspects of gender identity and open up doors for a number of varied interpretations. The authors considered range from Saratchandra to R Raj Rao, from Jhabvala to Manju Kapur. The contributions investigate a range of features of gender discourse, including feminism, masculinity, and homosexuality. As such, the volume represents an indispensable companion to any scholar of gender studies interested in the perspectives provided by Indian English fiction.

Migration, Trauma and Identity in Modern Indian Novels
Migration, Trauma and Identity in Modern Indian Novels

Author: Dr.Keshav Nath

Publisher: Shanlax Publications

Published:

Total Pages: 81

ISBN-13: 8119042220

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Drawing on a wealth of research, personal stories, and clinical insights, this book offers a nuanced and compassionate look at the profound impact of trauma on identity. It invites readers to explore the complex ways in which trauma can influence our beliefs, behaviors, relationships, and sense of purpose, as well as the challenges and opportunities that arise when we seek to reclaim our sense of self after trauma. From the lasting impact of childhood abuse to the challenges of navigating cultural and societal expectations, the book offers a deep and insightful exploration of the many ways in which trauma can shape identity. It also offers practical tools and strategies for those who are grappling with the aftermath of trauma, and for those who support them. Ultimately, this book is a powerful exploration of the ways in which trauma can shape our identities and our lives. It is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and a call to action for greater understanding and empathy.

Exploring Identity in Literature and Life Stories
Exploring Identity in Literature and Life Stories

Author: Guri Barstad

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2019-07-12

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1527536807

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Today, globalization, migration and political polarization complicate the individual’s search for a cohesive identity, making identity formation and transformation key issues in everyday life. This collection of essays highlights a number of the dimensions of identity, including cultural hybridity, religion, ethnicity, profession, gender, sexuality, and childhood, and explores how they are thematized in different narratives. The stories discussed are set in Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, France, Germany, Great Britain, Haiti, India, Israel, Japan, Polynesia, Norway, Romania, Spain and South Africa, emphasizing today’s international focus on identity. The majority of the contributions here focus on literary texts, while others investigate identity formations in interviews, language corpora, student reading logs, film, theatre and pathographies.

Black and White
Black and White

Author: Bryan Peppin

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2012-09-10

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1477218009

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Bryan was born into an "Anglo-Indian" family in 1952. His schooling was completed in 1968, exclusively in "Anglo-Indian" schools, which, up to that point in time at least, were identifiably "Anglo-Indian". Growing up with an "us/them" attitude, the issue was not a real problem until early research work in the field of British Fiction on India brought to Bryan's notice the unchanging negative profiling of the "Anglo-Indian" in books on the theme. Full-fledged research on the "Anglo-Indian" identity ( which culminated in a PhD from the University of Madras in 2010) threw up the picture of a minimal human species that combined the worst traits of East and West. Since Kipling's refrain was so blindly accepted in the nineteenth century, and most of the twentieth century, writers--both Indian and Western--blatantly vilified the "Anglo-Indian", in life as in fiction. This book is an attempt to set down an accurate record, by examining some of the latest (and not so new) books on the exclusive subject. It also calls to account the horrendous and often unforgivable errors made by some writers and many critics. Today, more than ever before, "Anglo-Indians" are completely at home, in India, as well as in other parts of the English-speaking world. It is hoped that, in time, a clearer, more humane picture of the real "Anglo-Indian" will emerge, as it must, when understanding erases the dark images of the past.

Imagining Indianness
Imagining Indianness

Author: Diana Dimitrova

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-02-08

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 3319410156

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This book brings together several important essays examining the interface between identity, culture, and literature within the issue of cultural identity in South Asian literature. The book explores how one imagines national identity and how this concept is revealed in the narratives of the nation and the production of various cultural discourses. The collection of essays examines questions related to the interpretation of the Indian past and present, the meanings of ancient and venerated cultural symbols in ancient times and modern, while discussing the ideological implications of the interpretation of identity and “Indianness” and how they reflect and influence the power-structures of contemporary societies in South Asia. Thus, the book studies the various aspects of the on-going process of constructing, imagining, re-imagining, and narrating “Indianness”, as revealed in the literatures and cultures of India.

National Identity and Cultural Representation in the Novels of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai
National Identity and Cultural Representation in the Novels of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai

Author: Sonali Das

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2018-04-18

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 1527509907

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This book is the first of its kind to examine the theories of nation and national identity in both the West (according to the theories of Benedict Anderson and Salman Rushdie) and in the East (in the light of the works of Jawaharlal Nehru) as they apply to the novels of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. The second part of the twentieth century witnessed a new interface between fiction and history called “New History”. It brought into its purview the hitherto marginalized sections of society like slaves, peasants, workers, women, and children. Whereas the subalterns in The Inheritance of Loss are disempowered by the brunt of globalisation and neo-colonialism, the subalterns in The God of Small Things face the ire of the deep-seated divisions based on caste and gender bias in a postcolonial society. In addition, this book also deals with contemporary social issues like individual identity in a multicultural world where cultures and nature converge into myriad ways of living. It will be of immense benefit to MA and MPhil students all over India, as well as to PhD scholars and teachers of English literature both in India and abroad.

Imaginary Homelands
Imaginary Homelands

Author: Salman Rushdie

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1992-05-01

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0140140360

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“Read every page of this book; better still, re-read them. The invocation means no hardship, since every true reader must surely be captivated by Rushdie’s masterful invention and ease, the flow of wit and insight and passion. How literature of the highest order can serve the interests of our common humanity is freshly illustrated here: a defence of his past, a promise for the future, and a surrender to nobody or nothing whatever except his own all-powerful imagination.”-Michael Foot, Observer Salman Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands is an important record of one writer’s intellectual and personal odyssey. The seventy essays collected here, written over the last ten years, cover an astonishing range of subjects –the literature of the received masters and of Rushdie’s contemporaries; the politics of colonialism and the ironies of culture; film, politicians, the Labour Party, religious fundamentalism in America, racial prejudice; and the preciousness of the imagination and of free expression. For this paperback edition, the author has written a new essay to mark the third anniversary of the fatwa.

The White Tiger
The White Tiger

Author: Aravind Adiga

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-04-22

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1416562737

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NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE The stunning Booker Prize–winning novel from the author of Amnesty and Selection Day that critics have likened to Richard Wright’s Native Son, The White Tiger follows a darkly comic Bangalore driver through the poverty and corruption of modern India’s caste society. “This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you've never heard it before” (John Burdett, Bangkok 8). The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society. Recalling The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, The White Tiger is narrative genius with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation—and a startling, provocative debut.