TY - BOOK
T1 - Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel
T2 - On Catastrophic Realism
AU - Bhattacharya, Sourit
PY - 2020/5/27
Y1 - 2020/5/27
N2 - This book argues that modernity in postcolonial India has been synonymous with catastrophe and crisis. Focusing on the literary works of the 1943 Bengal Famine, the 1967–72 Naxalbari Movement, and the 1975–77 Indian Emergency, it shows that there is a long-term, colonially-engineered agrarian crisis enabling these catastrophic events. Novelists such as Bhabani Bhattacharya, Mahasweta Devi, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Nabarun Bhattacharya, and Nayantara Sahgal, among others, have captured the relationship between the long-term crisis and the catastrophic aspects of the events through different aesthetic modalities within realism, ranging from analytical-affective, critical realist, quest modes to apparently non-realist ones such as metafictional, urban fantastic, magical realist, and others. These realist modalities are together read here as postcolonial catastrophic realism.
AB - This book argues that modernity in postcolonial India has been synonymous with catastrophe and crisis. Focusing on the literary works of the 1943 Bengal Famine, the 1967–72 Naxalbari Movement, and the 1975–77 Indian Emergency, it shows that there is a long-term, colonially-engineered agrarian crisis enabling these catastrophic events. Novelists such as Bhabani Bhattacharya, Mahasweta Devi, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Nabarun Bhattacharya, and Nayantara Sahgal, among others, have captured the relationship between the long-term crisis and the catastrophic aspects of the events through different aesthetic modalities within realism, ranging from analytical-affective, critical realist, quest modes to apparently non-realist ones such as metafictional, urban fantastic, magical realist, and others. These realist modalities are together read here as postcolonial catastrophic realism.
KW - postcolonial modernity
KW - catastrophic realism
KW - Indian novels
KW - Indian fiction
KW - 1943-44 Bengal famine
KW - Naxalbari Movement
KW - State of Emergency
KW - British modernisation programmes
KW - British Raj
KW - modes or realism
KW - global realisms
KW - Bhabani Bhattacharya
KW - Amalendu Chakraborty
KW - Mahasweta Devi
KW - Nabarun Bhattacharya
KW - Salman Rushdie
KW - Nayantara Sahgal
KW - Rohinton Mistry
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-37397-9
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-37397-9
M3 - Book
SN - 9783030373962
SN - 9783030373993
T3 - New Comparisons in World Literature
BT - Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel
PB - Palgrave Macmillan
ER -