Indian English Literature

English is a foreign language but since the British came to India the language has had an impact on several fields-in education, literary effort and as a medium of communication. Its early history began with the works of R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao who contributed to Indian fiction in the 1930s. It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian diaspora, such as V.S.Naipaul, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Agha Shahid Ali, Rohinton Mistry and Salman Rushdie, who are of Indian descent. IEL has a relatively recent history, being only one and a half centuries old. The first book written by an Indian in English was travels of Dean Mahomet, a travel narrative by Sake Dean Mahomet published in England in 1793. In its early stages, IEL was influenced by the Western novel. Early Indian writers used English unadulterated by Indian words to convey and experience which was essentially Indian. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote Rajmohan’s Wife and published it in the year 1864, it the first Indian novel written in English. Raja Rao, Indian philosopher and writer, authored Kanthapura and the Serpent and the Rope, which are Indian in terms of their storytelling qualities. Kisari Mohan Ganguli translated the Mahabharat into English, the only time the epic has ever been translated in its entirety into a European language. Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible for the translations of his own work into English. The book provides the students current information on the different areas of this subject. The publication is useful not only to the students but also to the research scholars and academic professionals.