Title: Utopia and the rural in South Asian literatures /
Authors: Mohan, Anupama.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan,
Year: 2012
Subjects: South Asian literature (English) History and criticism.; Rural conditions in literature.; Utopias in literature.; LITERARY CRITICISM European English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.; Rural conditions in literature.; South Asian literature (English); Utopias in literature.
Abstract: Utopia and the Rural in South Asian Literatures provides a searching exploration of twentieth-century literatures of the Indian subcontinent by refocusing attention on works that engage with the village and the rural as a trope. Mohan breathes new life into Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopia and continues a conversation with thinkers of utopia about the need for recuperating the utopian potential in postcolonial writings. The book provides provocative readings of some of the most important works of the 20th century in India and Sri Lanka (in English as well as in translation) and, in its conceptual sweep, presents a novel way of theorizing the intersecting but also distinct literary histories of India and Sri Lanka. Authors examined for their unique visions of the rural include Mohandas Gandhi, Leonard Woolf, Martin Wickramasinghe, O.V. Vijayan, Amitav Ghosh, and Michael Ondaatje. For both the novice and the scholar, this is a book that will truly define the horizons for understanding South Asian literatures and cultures, and their broader significance within postcolonial scholarship.
Contents: Hind Swaraj and rural utopia -- Beddagama: dystopia in Ceylon -- Kanthapura and Khasak: utopia in distress -- Koggala and the reclaimed buddhist utopia -- Rethinking the binary: rural heterotopia.