Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: postcolonial literature in a changing historical frame
- 2 Postcolonial fictions of slavery
- 3 Postcolonialism and travel writing
- 4 Missionary writing and postcolonialism
- 5 Postcolonial auto/biography
- 6 Orality and the genres of African postcolonial writing
- 7 Canadian literatures and the postcolonial
- 8 Postcolonialism and Caribbean literature
- 9 Postcolonialism and Arab literature
- 10 Postcolonialism and postcolonial writing in Latin America
- 11 Postcolonial writing in South Africa
- 12 Postcolonial literature in Southeast Asia
- 13 Postcolonial South Asian poetry
- 14 Postcolonial writing in India
- 15 Postcolonial writing in Australia and New Zealand
- 16 Indigenous writing in Canada, Australia and New Zealand
- 17 Postcolonial writing in Ireland
- 18 Postcolonial writing in Britain
- 19 Postcolonial writing in France
- 20 Postcolonial writing in Germany
- References
14 - Postcolonial writing in India
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2012
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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: postcolonial literature in a changing historical frame
- 2 Postcolonial fictions of slavery
- 3 Postcolonialism and travel writing
- 4 Missionary writing and postcolonialism
- 5 Postcolonial auto/biography
- 6 Orality and the genres of African postcolonial writing
- 7 Canadian literatures and the postcolonial
- 8 Postcolonialism and Caribbean literature
- 9 Postcolonialism and Arab literature
- 10 Postcolonialism and postcolonial writing in Latin America
- 11 Postcolonial writing in South Africa
- 12 Postcolonial literature in Southeast Asia
- 13 Postcolonial South Asian poetry
- 14 Postcolonial writing in India
- 15 Postcolonial writing in Australia and New Zealand
- 16 Indigenous writing in Canada, Australia and New Zealand
- 17 Postcolonial writing in Ireland
- 18 Postcolonial writing in Britain
- 19 Postcolonial writing in France
- 20 Postcolonial writing in Germany
- References
Summary
Indian middle-man (to Author): Sir, if we do not identify your composition a novel, how then do we itemise it? Sir, the rank and file is entitled to know.
Author (to Indian middle-man): Sir, I identify it as a gesture. Sir, the rank and file is entitled to know.
Indian middle-man (to Author): Sir, there is no immediate demand for gestures. There is immediate demand for novels. Sir, we are literary agents not free agents.
Author (to Indian middle-man): Sir, I identify it a novel. Sir, itemise it accordingly.
The above exchange, which constitutes one of several frontispieces that frame G. V. Desani’s maverick and freewheeling novel of 1949, offers a provocative opening for this essay. Writing two years after the independence of India, Desani makes his ‘author’ and his initially blustering stance define the very essence of postcolonial necessity. Now is the time of immense social and cultural change, a moment pregnant with opportunity, which demands transformation of the mere fact of the novel into something far more meaningful: the ‘gesture’. And yet this grandiloquence is rapidly brought down to earth by the brute realities of the market, which relentlessly declares its own chain of demand and supply. The author’s quick turnaround, while ridiculous, is touchingly redeemed by the pragmatism that propels it. Moreover, it is an ‘Indian middle-man’ who, in the name of the ordinary ‘rank and file’, imposes on the author these mundane yet unavoidable pressures.
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- The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature , pp. 412 - 445Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012
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