Ebook: Indian Literature and the World: Multilingualism, Translation, and the Public Sphere

This book is about the most vibrant yet under-studied aspects of Indian writing today. It examines multilingualism, current debates on postcolonial versus world literature, the impact of translation on an "Indian" literary canon, and Indian authors' engagement with the public sphere. The essays cover political activism and the North-East Tribal novel; the role of work in the contemporary Indian fictional imaginary; history as felt and reconceived by the acclaimed Hindi author Krishna Sobti; Bombay fictions; the Dalit autobiography in translation and its problematic international success; development, ecocriticism and activist literature; casteism and access to literacy in the South; and gender and diaspora as dominant themes in writing from and about the subcontinent. Troubling Eurocentric genre distinctions and the split between citizen and subject, the collection approaches Indian literature from the perspective of its constant interactions between private and public narratives, thereby proposing a method of reading Indian texts that goes beyond their habitual postcolonial identifications as "national allegories.";1. Introduction: Indian Literature and the World; Rossella Ciocca and Neelam Srivastava -- SECTION ONE: COMPARING MULTILINGUAL PERSPECTIVES -- 2. Pre-nation and Post-colony: 1947 in Qurratulain Hyder's My Temples, Too and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; Rajeswari Sunder Rajan -- 3. 'Reading Together: Hindi, Urdu, and English Village Novels'; Francesca Orsini -- 4. 'Choosing a Tongue, Choosing a Form: Kamala Das's Bilingual Algorithms; Udaya Kumar -- SECTION TWO: ENLARGING THE WORLD LITERARY CANON: NEW VOICES AND TRANSLATION -- 5. A Multiple Addressivity: Indian Subaltern Autobiographies and the Role of Translation; Neelam Srivastava -- 6. The Modern Tamil Novel: Changing Identities and Transformations; Lakshmi Holmström -- 7. 'The Voices of Krishna Sobti in the Polyphonic Canon of Indian Literature; Stefania Cavaliere -- SECTION THREE: GLOBALIZED INDIAN PUBLIC SPHERES -- 8. Resisting Slow Violence: Writing, Activism and Environmentalism; Alessandra Marino -- 9. The Novel and the Northeast: Indigenous Narratives in Indian Literatures; Mara Matta -- 10. From Nation to World: Bombay Fictions and the Urban Public Sphere; Rossella Ciocca -- 11. The Individual and the Collective in Contemporary India: Manju Kapur's Home and Custody; Maryam Mirza -- 12. zHome is a place you've never been toy: A Woman's Place in the Indian Diasporic Novel; Clelia Clini -- Index.-