21st Century Perspectives on Indian Writing in English

A Time to Turn

Edited By: Debasish Lahiri, Pradipta Mukherjee

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These essays offer a critical lens on Indian writing in English, exploring major voices and their socio-historical contexts. With sections on poetry, prose, and drama, plus incisive interviews, it raises crucial questions about culture, intolerance, and diversity.

The essays gathered here alternately adjust the focal length of the critical lens brought to bear upon texts and contexts in the area of Indian…

The essays gathered here alternately adjust the focal length of the critical lens brought to bear upon texts and contexts in the area of Indian writing in English. They bring into view both intense engagements with major voices in this literary scene and the wider socio-historical perspectives in which they have thrived.

Three clearly defined sections on the genres of poetry, prose, and drama are augmented by three incisive interviews with the diasporic Indian English poet Bashabi Fraser, the renowned Indian English fiction writer Kunal Basu, and the premier Indian English playwright Mahesh Dattani.

The volume will appeal to students and teachers of postcolonial and comparative literatures. It raises crucial and timely questions about the state of culture in India and the world, the crisis of intolerance, and the loss of memory and diversity. It hones a post-millennial perspective on literature written in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Debasish Lahiri is an Assistant Professor in English literature at Lal Baba College of the University of Calcutta, India. He is the author of Chiaroscuro Curfew: Essays in the Lives of Art (2020), the co-editor of Literary Transactions in a Globalized Context (2010), and the co-author of Tragic Survivals: From the Hellenic to the Postmodern (2017). He is also an internationally acclaimed poet, having authored First Will & Testament (2012), No Waiting like Departure (2016), Tinder Tender: Poems of Love and Loitering (2018), Poppies in the Post and Other Poems (2020), Paysages sans Verbes (2021), and Tether that Light (2022).

Pradipta Mukherjee is a film critic and Associate Professor in the Department of English of Vidyasagar College for Women of the University of Calcutta, India. Her published books include Fluid Frame in Cinema: Collected Essays (2021); Studies in John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (2010); and Shakespeare on the Celluloid: Global Perspectives (2014). She is also the co-author of Tragic Survivals: From the Hellenic to the Postmodern (2017) and the co-editor of The Diasporic Dilemma: Exile, Alienation and Belonging (2014); Dodging Dystopia: Literary Routes, Global Circuits (2022); and Women’s Education in India: Past Predicaments and Future Possibilities (2016).

Angshuman Kar, Medha Bhadra Choudhury, Anirban Guha Thakurta, Pradeep Trikha, Julie Mehta, Nishi Pulugurtha, Vinay Sharma, Didier Coste, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Hemraj Bansal, Subhendu Sarkar, Pradipta Mukherjee, Debasish Lahiri, Debasish Lahiri