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It's
really gladdening to know that in the first decade of the 21st century, more than four hundred English novels, excluding short story books, have been penned by Indians? The figure is probably higher than the total number of novels published in India since the first English novel appeared on Indian soil in 1874. The figure might appear bloated, one would think, but then Jagdish Batra, an expert in Indian English fiction and the editor of the book under review, takes pains to list the names of all these works and then delves deep into the thematic aspects of around 130 novels. Since Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children appeared on the literary horizon way back in 1981, the graph of the Indian English novel has admittedly been rising steadily. The all-time high sales of Chetan Bhagat's light novels (two crores, as per the writer's version) heralded a new era in India. The award of the Man Booker prize to Arvind Adiga's The White Tiger lent a measure of respectability to the popular novel.
Batra, whose previously published works on Indian English literature include Form and Style in Indian English Fiction, Rohinton Mistry: Identity, Values and Other Sociological Concerns and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake: A Critical Study, remarks in the introduction aptly titled A Bountiful Decade that the proliferation of novel in the 21st century has given a lie to the doomsday predictions of some literary stalwarts of the previous century who had laid down the year 2000 as the 'dirge date' of Indian English literature. The situation now is such that not only established writers, but also young people belonging to different vocations — teachers, journalists, doctors, computer professionals and management executives — have taken to writing novels. The picture is not as rosy for the genres of poetry and drama. However, the light variety of fiction has surged ahead of serious fiction. The present anthology contains critiques of novels originally written in English by Indians — born in India or naturalised through marriage or residence — after the year 2000. No doubt, contemporary fiction reflects the aspirations and aversions of the middle class, yet the fact remains that it is the diaspora writers who dominate literary production and it is their imagination that colours the picture of India, the locale, characters and ethos included. Among other critics who have examined different novels, Santwana Haldar's study of Amitav Ghosh's novel River of Smoke deserves a mention. The novel deals with the obscure history of Indians in China during the period of the Opium War. Similarly, Sushil Gupta, who is also the writer reviewed for his novel The Fourth Monkey, comments on Tarun Tejpal's The Valley of Masks. While Chetan Bhagat's novels dealing with the issues affecting contemporary Indian youth have been commented upon by Priyanka Lamba, J. Samuel Kirubahar and A.K. Muthusamy have examined V.S. Naipual's later fiction dealing with the plight of expatriates in the style of, more or less, a thriller and which, in Bharati Mukherjee's words, is “about unhousing and remain unhoused.” Another diaspora writer Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Queen of Dreams has been reviewed by C. Bharathi and S. Kalamani as having existential overtones. On the other hand, a novel by Roswitha Joshi, a German by birth, has been hailed by the editor for accurately portraying the cultural chasm. Shashi Deshpande continues to be a popular novelist. Her latest novels have been critiqued by Kirti B. Vitthani and Dipti Patel. Women writers, it is seen, value the gender perspective but at the same time, are weary of separate categorisation for fear of being discriminated. Jhumpa Lahiri, Manju Kapur, Arvind Adiga, Kiran Desai, Geeta Abraham Jose, Rohinton Mistry and Siddharth Shanghavi also find a place in the narrative.
The editor has insightfully divided the entire corpus produced in the first decade of this century into different categories such as Family and Feminism, Individuals and Relationships, Travel and Adventure, Time and Space, Multiculturalism etc. The miscellaneous section deals with popular fiction based on science, myths, crime etc. The reader may find some printing errors and some of the categorisation may not be acceptable to all but there is no denying the fact that the book is truly a labour of love. Being a compilation of critiques of established writers as well as promising upcoming ones, the book presents a comprehensive picture of the contemporary Indian English Novel. It will be useful for students and scholars of English literature.
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