Patrick O’Donnell. The American Novel Now: Reading Contemporary American Fiction Since 1980

Abstract

and Shashi Deshpande’s essays discuss the significance of global success for Indian English literature as well as at home. Other essay’s by Bharati Mukherjee, Nissim Ezekiel, Nalini Natarajan, Vijay Mishra, and Jsabir Jain address the ‘cross-cultural’ encounters in the Indian fiction, diaspora, nation-state and the self. In all, the collection is broad and diverse. But for a volume on South Asia, Indian literature and Indian contributions dominate the book. And the collection could have benefited from the inclusion of the anthropological works on “jajmani system” and “village communities”, which were central to the early Orientalist scholarship. Among other missing components are the writings by the Subaltern Studies group; the agrarian strife and the peasant movements in the early 20th century. Having said that, however, the collection succeeds in bringing a wide selection of scholarly works on South Asia to the readers both within and outside of the region. The essays are written in a clear and concise manner; the absence theoretical jargon also makes this collection accessible to non-specialist readers.