Essays on Indian Writing in English: Twice-Born or Cosmopolitan Literature?

Book Details

• Publisher: Rawat Publications

• Author: Dieter Riemenschneider

• Language: English

• ISBN: 9788131608142

• Pages: 199

• Cover: Hardcover

• Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 1.0 inches

About the Book

This book presents a collection of fifteen essays on Indian fiction writing and poetry in English by Dieter Riemenschneider, reflecting his long-standing commitment to understanding Indian literary culture. The essays, written over half a century, trace Riemenschneider’s growing familiarity with Indian English writing, shedding light on its thematic, formal, and stylistic shifts, as well as its evolution in scope and quality.

The book engages with the critical literary debate surrounding the pros and cons of Indians writing in English, as well as the controversial issue of ‘Indianness’ in Indian literature. The essays offer insight into the works of renowned authors such as Mulk Raj Anand, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy, and R.K. Narayan, addressing the changing dynamics in the literary landscape.

Complementing the essays are photographs, many of which were taken by the author, and a select bibliography of his publications, offering readers a comprehensive understanding of one of South Asia’s most vibrant literary traditions.

Contents:

• Early Critics of Indo-English Novelists – Meenakshi Mukherjee and M.K. Naik

• Human Labour and Alienation – Mulk Raj Anand’s Novels

• The New Poets Manifesto – P. Lal and Contemporary Indian English Poetry

• History and the Individual – Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day

• Indian Women Writing in English – A Brief Look at Short Stories of the 1970s and Early 1980s

• Marginalizing the Centre — Centring the Periphery – The Critical Debate on ‘Indian’ Literature in English

• ‘In the Days When the Love Laws Were Made’ – Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

• Global Fantasy — Glocal Imagination – The New Literatures in English and their Fantastic Imaginations

• Crossing National Borders – The Indian English Novel since the 1990s

• Nature and Landscape – An Evolutionary Psychological Analysis of Raja Rao’s Writing

• ‘The Train Has Moved On’ – R.K. Narayan’s The Guide and Literary History

• Glocality and its (Dis)contents – The Future of English Language Literatures Studies

• The Persistence and Creation of Internal Borders – India in Aotearoa New Zealand

• Translating Cultures – Pictorial and Literary Representations of India in William Hodges’s Paintings and Travel Book

• Retrieving Human Rights – Indra Sinha’s Novel Animal’s People and Critical Cosmopolitanism

About the Author

Dieter Riemenschneider is a distinguished scholar who taught German at Panjab University, Chandigarh, and Delhi University (1963–66) and New English Literatures at Frankfurt University (1971–99). His work includes more than 100 publications on Indian English writing. He is well-known for his Ph.D. on The Modern Indian Novel in English (Darmstadt, 1974) and his extensive research on Indian literature, with contributions to various international journals and books.

Riemenschneider has lectured at universities across India, including Delhi, Hyderabad, Madras, and Bombay, and held visiting fellowships at institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. After more than two dozen visits to India since 1971, he now resides in Kronberg im Taunus, Germany, with his wife, New Zealand-born poet Jan Kemp.