New Comparisons in World Literature: On Catastrophic Realism

Bhattacharya, Sourit

This book argues that modernity in postcolonial India has been synonymous with catastrophe and crisis. Focusing on the literary works of the 1943 Bengal Famine, the 1967–72 Naxalbari Movement, and the 1975–77 Indian Emergency, it shows that there is a long-term, colonially-engineered agrarian crisis enabling these catastrophic events. Novelists such as Bhabani Bhattacharya, Mahasweta Devi, Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Nabarun Bhattacharya, and Nayantara Sahgal, among others, have captured the relationship between the long-term crisis and the catastrophic aspects of the events through different aesthetic modalities within realism, ranging from analytical-affective, critical realist, quest modes to apparently non-realist ones such as metafictional, urban fantastic, magical realist, and others. These realist modalities are together read here as postcolonial catastrophic realism. 

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2020-05-28

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9783030373962

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-37397-9

Dimensions: 210cm x148cm

Pages: 280