Product Description

Priya Joshi demonstrates how a paradoxical legacy has shaped the works of Indian writers such as Krupa Satthianadhan, Ahmed Ali and Salman Rushdie, a process she calls the "indigenization" of the English novel. Taken together, reading and writing reveal the complex ways in which culture was translated and transformed in colonial and postcolonial contexts. The novel first arrived in India over 200 years ago as a means and manifestation of British imperialism, quickly becoming a centre-piece of Indian print culture. "In Another Country" attempts to advance our understanding of this process by examining in detail the patterns of Indian readership, asking what Indians chose to read and why. It shows that despite the British novel's great popularity in India, its consumption by readers there in fact highlights the limits of empire and Englishness in the subcontinent.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1053088 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
"Fascinating... a truly remarkable piece of scholarship... stimulating." -- Choice "Joshi's research... achieve[s] a historical richness and intimacy unmatched by any recent study of colonial or postcolonial literature. What makes In Another Country methodologically original is the subtlety with which it situates political meaning... An unstoppable read." -- Leah Price, Victorian Studies "This innovative and ambitious book challenges simplistic hegemonic perspectives on colonialism and culture, intervening imaginatively into current discussions of the development of the novel in English and... [its] global travels. In lively, engaging prose, In Another Country mines library records, publishers' archives, and works by Indian writers to glean new understandings of how English books were read in India in the nineteenth century and of the process by which consumers of those books became producers of Indian literature in English. As Joshi's ingenious reconstruction of the consumption practices of nineteenth-century India's resistant readers predicts, the tradition of the Indian novel that emerged in the twentieth century transmuted its colonial legacy in unpredictable ways that ultimately reversed the priorities of Englishness and empire." -- Citation of the MLA Prize for a First Book Committee "This welcome book shows how India and Indians, over time, indigenized English novels to reflect their ideas, experiences, and realities... Thankfully, this study shows how notable Indian responses, experiments, and critical voices constantly complemented, engaged, and reimagined the British counterpart." -- Charles Lindholm, Journal of Asian Studies "This study of the impact of the English novel on nineteenth-and twentieth-century India is an important contribution to Indian book history... many of Joshi's findings are new and startling and ought to stimulate further studies and enquiries in the field of Indian book history." -- Rimi B. Chatterjee, SHARP News "Joshi's interpretations are nuanced and careful...Joshi does excellent work as a critical reader of texts." -- Henry Schwarz, Georgetown University, Modern Language Quarterly

About the Author
Priya Joshi is assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of California at Berkeley.