Indian English Novel in The Nineties and After

This book purports to be a narrative history of recent Indian fiction in terms of artistic ends, materials and techniques. Fiction happens to be the dominant form of our time with what Bakhtin calls its dialogic orientation. Indian English Fiction in recent times has witnessed the most significant development in the aesthetic and thematic ordering of fictional events, or in other words, narratology. Contemporary Indian English novels have thrown up new signs of identity, opened up innovative sites for collaboration and contestation. There is a growing demand for diversity, new formulation of claims for minorities, valorization of hybridity, a sense of precarious being so symptomatic of living in modern society. Indian English novelists daringly experiment with the language of fiction, the inventive vitality in the use of fantasy, science fiction, magic realism, syntactically dislocated word play have substantially enriched the form of the Indian English novel. The introductory discussion and a close reading of novels of 1990’2 and after attempts to locate the text as inextricably grounded in the narrative of history (kala) of histories, nation, community or culture (desa) and subjectivity (svabhava). It critically examines key trends, conflicts and issues that Indian English novel addresses, to explain how and why it appears the way it does.