History, Narrative, and Testimony in Amitav Ghosh's Fiction

Edited by Chitra Sankaran

Subjects: Asian Literature
Paperback : 9781438441801, 272 pages, January 2013
Hardcover : 9781438441818, 272 pages, April 2012

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Table of contents

Chronological Bioprofile
Introduction: Beyond Borders and Boundaries
Chitra Sankaran

1. Diasporic Predicaments: An Interview with Amitav Ghosh
Chitra Sankaran

2. Unlikely Encounters: Fiction and Scientific Discourse in the Novels of Amitav Ghosh
Lou Ratté

3. The Glass Palace: Reconnecting Two Diasporas
Nandini Bhautoo-Dewnarain

4. Resignifying “Coolie”: Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace
Shanthini Pillai

5. The Girmitiyas’ Journey in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies
Rajesh Rai and Andrea Marion Pinkney
6. Shadows and Mysteries: Illusions of Imagined Communities in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines
Crystal Taylor

7. Amitav Ghosh’s “Imagined Communities”: The Hungry Tide as a Possible “Other” World
Federica Zullo

8. Sharing Landscapes and Mindscapes: Ethics and Aesthetics in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome
Chitra Sankaran

9. Language and Ethics in The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
Tuomas Huttunen

10. Ghosh, Language, and The Hungry Tide
Ismail S. Talib

11. Intertexuality in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide
Shao-Pin Luo

12. “Dwelling in Travel”: In An Antique Land  and the Making of a Resisting Post-Colonial History
Tammy Vernerey

13. The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery—A Tour de Force Transcending Genres
Ruby S. Ramraj

14. Inner Circles and the Voice of the Shuttle: Native Forms and Narrative Structure in Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason
Robbie B. H. Goh

List of Contributors
Index

Comprehensive overview of the work of Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh.

Description

This is the first collection of international scholarship on the fiction of Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh's work is read by a wide audience and is well regarded by general readers, critics, and scholars throughout the world. Born in India, Ghosh has lived in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. His work spans genres from contemporary realism to historical fiction to science fiction, but has consistently dealt with the dislocations, violence, and meetings of peoples and cultures engendered by colonialism.

The essays in this volume analyze Ghosh's novels in ways that yield new insights into concepts central to postcolonial and transnational studies, making important intertextual connections and foregrounding links to prevailing theoretical and speculative scholarship. The work's introduction argues that irony is central to Ghosh's vision and discusses the importance of the concepts of "testimony" and "history" to Ghosh's narratives. An invaluable interview with Amitav Ghosh discusses individual works and the author's overall philosophy.

Chitra Sankaran is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at National University of Singapore and is the author of Myth Connections: The Use of Hindu Myths and Philosophies in R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao, Revised Edition.