The Indian Novel in English: Its Critical Discourse 1934-2004

Dieter Riemenschneider’s fresh study approaches the Indian novel in English from the angle of its diverse range of readings by Indian and international critics over a period of six decades, or from the beginnings of a critical discourse in the 1930s until the present time. The investigation into the reception of the novel genre as such and of the works of its three ‘founding fathers’, viz., Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao. The latter chapters are supplemented by a list of the respective author’s novels, the most comprehensive critical bibliography to date and a list of critics that includes their publication dates. Following the development of both the emergence of the modern Indian novel in English since the mid-1930s and its critical evaluation, Riemenschneider reaction to a ‘new’ literacy Genre, as well as the national and international shifts of the critical literacy discourse from the earlier close-reading approach of new Critism to the more recent employment of postmodern and postcolonial theorems. The Indian Novel in English thus offers the reader insight into the general critical concern with what is now referred to as postcolonial literature. No serious student of the Indian novel in English should miss this comprehensive, informative and balanced critical study.