When Borne Across: Literary Cosmopolitics in the Contemporary Indian Novel

Abstract

India's 1997 celebration of the Golden jubilee marked 50 years of independence from British colonial rule. This anniversary is the impetus for Bishnupriya Ghosh's exploration of the English language icons of South Asianpost-colonial literature: Salman Rushdie, Vikram Chandra, Amitav Ghosh, Upamanyu Chatterjee and Arundhati Roy. These authors, grouped together as South Asian cosmopolitical writers, produce work challenging and expanding pre-conceived notions of Indian cultural identity, while being sold simultaneously as popular English literature within the global market. This commodification of Indian language and identity reinforces incomplete and simplified images of India and its writers, and at times counteracts the expressed agenda of the writers. In this volume, Ghosh focuses on the politics of language and history, and the related processes of translation and migration within the global network. In so doing, she develops a new approach to literary studies that adapts conventional literary analysis to the pressures, constraints and liberties of the contemporary era of globalization.

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