The book is the first to provide an in-depth study of Indian writer-activist Mahasweta Devi’s environmental vision as reflected in her literary and critical writings. It offers a detailed reading of nineteen of Mahasweta’s literary texts, along with many of her critical works, all of which were originally written in Bengali, and most of which have been translated into English. The select works have been read from the perspective of the Environmentalism of the Poor to foreground how marginalized communities understand the environment through their immediate lived experiences of it, and how, for them, environmentalism is an everyday survival imperative. The study situates Mahasweta’s select novels, novellas, short stories, critical essays, opinion articles and a play in their particular historical, socio-political and economic context to explore how intersecting markers of identity, such as ethnicity, caste, class and gender, shape the environmental experiences of vulnerable communities in the margins. It establishes Mahasweta’s literary works as vital to understanding the complex interplay of power, capital and environment in the postcolonial context.

Sk Tarik Ali is Assistant Professor in the PG Department of English at Hooghly Mohsin College, India.