Indian Booker Prize Winners

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The present book is a collection of critical expertise and acumen on the four celebrated and coveted Indian Booker Prize winning novels of India: Salman Rushdie’s Midnights Children, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. These four novels gave Indian English Fiction exclusive wavelength and frequency in the worldwide spectrum of literature. The present critical book co-edited by Dr Vivekanand Jha and Dr Rajnish Mishra renders an exhaustive and comprehensive study of these novels in all facts, forms and configuration. The inclusion of the three interviews further adds glory to the worth of this book and will be extremely instrumental for the students, research scholars and readers to elucidate their work adequately. The book honed together with quality and variety will open a floodgate for critiquing the Booker Prize winning novels of India. The book presents the articles of Dinesh Kumar, Raji Ramesh, N Chandra, Usha Kishore, Josephine Muganiwa, Ambarish Sen, J. David Livingston, Sophia Livingston, Shilpi Bhattacharya, Gulnaz Fatima, Kakali Bhattacharyya, Maumita Chaudhuri, Dalvir Singh Gahlawat, Lipsa Malhotra, Jubimol K. G., U. Gayathri Devi, Shalini Misra, Deeptangshu Das, Kavita S. Vansia, Ramesh P, Chavan, Shawn Stufflebeam, David Barsamian, Dinyar Godrej, Rajnish Mishra and Vivekanand Jha.

Dr. Vivekanand Jha is a translator, editor and award winning poet. He is the author of 05 books of poetry in English, 01 critical book on the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra and has edited 09 critical anthologies on Indian English Writing. His poems have been published in more than 100 magazines and 25 poetry anthologies round the world. He has also edited The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India to be published by Hidden Brook Press, Canada. He is the son of the noted professor, post and award winning translator Dr. Rajanand Jha (Crowned with Sahitya Akedemi Award, New Delhi).

Dr. Rajnish Mishra is an Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Science and Humanities, IMS Engineering College, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. He has co-edited six critical anthologies on Indian English Literature. He is presently working on the psychogeographical effect of his city, Varanasi, in both creative and critical media.

The anthology you hold in your hands presents a composite collection of critical articles on the four Booker Prize winning novels of India: Salman Rushdie’s Midnights Children, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. Indian English literature has made as in-erasable mark in the post-independence period. Though it has made all around progress and name but the Indian English fiction in particular has revolutionized its identity. Indian English novelists transcended the boundary of local and provinciali and surprised the literary world by romping home some of the coveted prizes, awards and acclaims.

When Rushdie first published Midnight’s Children in 1981, no one could have anticipated that it would be an auspicious dawn to dense darkness pervading the Indian English Novel. The novel not only brought Rushdie laurels and literary frame but it also opened floodgates of success in the literary market of the world. The novel earned publicity as well as royalty and at the same time laid a foundation for booming economy of the print market for Indian English Fiction. It opened up the way for the pre-publication purchase of the exclusive rights of books by Indian English novelists like Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, Pankaj Mishra, Raj Kamal Jha and Shashi Tharoor who have since won huge advance royalties from their publishers in the West. It was almost as this one novel had triggered off a new market for Indian English writing and the Indian English novel had been positioned from margin to the centre of the fictional world.

Now coming to the contents, the book begins with a tribute poem of Vivekanand Jha which eulogizes Indian English Fiction. There upon Dinesh Kumar and Raji Ramesh’s paper is about the cultural negotiation in the Indian society and its resonance as visible in a new historicist reading of Adiga’s The White Tiger. The paper of N. Chandra analyses how Adiga’s The White Tiger is a bitingly sarcastic remark on the Indian darkness where corruption thrives and enjoys seeing innocence and virtue taking their last breath. Usha Kishore’s paper is about the systematic and systematized exploitation of a permanent kind, of women and dalits in the Indian society as shown in Roy’s The God of Small Things. Josephine Muganiwa’s paper locates Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in the larger traditions of magic realist and postcolonial novels, showing how it possesses the traits of both.

Ambarish Sen’s paper deals with the (re)creation of history Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children which is a milestone in the postcolonial fiction that reconstructs history in its telling through its selection of narrator, Salim Sinai. J. David Livingston & Sophia Livingston’s paper shows how Arundhati Roy highlights the exploitation of dalits and women by the patriarchal society in her The God of Small Things. The article of Vivekanand Jha throws light on the objectives of identity and hybridity in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Shilpi Bhattacharya’s paper deals with the crisis of human values like freedom, love, pursuit of happiness and enjoyment of beauty in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Gulnaz Fatima’s paper on Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger presents two aspects of India: dark and bright. The present paper posits that it does so through its narrator and narrative mode and through its quintessential postcolonial stance.

Kakali Bhattacharyya’s paper is about how Arundhati Roy critiques in her The God of Small Things the institutionalized and widely practiced and accepted domination over and exploitation of women and children by the most powerful elements of the patriarchal society: the adult males. Maumita Chaudhuri’s paper presents the translation of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children from text to film and the changes required along with the various demands of the practical rendering of words on to the screen. Rajnish Mishra’s paper looks at the relationship of violence in wars, riots and religion in the Indian subcontinent, as portrayed in The Shadow Lines and Midnight’s Children. Dalvir Singh Gahlawat’s paper takes it as the point of departure to comment on the exploitation and “othering” of women in a patriarchal society of an androcentric world being exposed in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Lipsa Malhotra’s paper is a feminist and subaltern analysis of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and shows how women and dalits are exploited and ruined by the upper caste patriarchy.

The paper of Jubimol K.G. is an attempt to show how the Bakhtinian elements of dialogism, polyphony, heteroglossia, grotesque and carnivalesque enrich Roy’s celebrated the God of Small Things, and also act functionally in strengthening its critique of the whole social system. Adiga’s The White Tiger and Bhajwa’s The Sari Shop are the novels taken up in the paper of U. Gayathri Devi because they have an uncanny similarity in their being centered on the subaltern and in being able to provide voice to the voiceless and powerless people through their characters.Shalini Misra’s paper presents a thematic analysis of Adiga’s The White Tiger. It shows how the novel exposes the contrast between the two India’s of darkness and light. Deeptangshu Das’s paper is about the multiple narratives of loss that touch the realms of Nation, History, Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss.

Kavita S. Vansia’s paper is a thorough analysis of the narrative techniques utilised in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Ramesh P. Chavan’s paper is a critical portrayal of the patriarchy’s exploitation of the untouchables and women in the traditional Indian society as shown in Roy’s The God of Small Things. Rajnish Mishra’s paper is about Rushdie’s use of various narrative strategies and traits of genre to make his narration of Midnight’s Children interesting. Vivekanand Jha’s paper portrays characterization of the judge who is an emblem of injustice and eccentricity in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss.

The Denouement of this comprehensive and exhaustive critical anthology is accomplished by the inclusion of three interviews which further bolsters the efficacy and effectiveness of the anthology. We are grateful and indebted to all the three interviewees and the editors of the magazine in which these interviews were published first for giving us reprinting right. The interviews, revealing and informative in nature, will be handsomely handful for the students, researchers and scholars in persuading their respective goals. It is trusted with utter conviction that this edited anthology of critical and analytical articles will be distinguished and prominent to the readers and academicians of Indian English literature in hunting their endeavours and goals.

We utter our deep sense of gratitude and thankfulness to all revered contributors for their warm and affectionate support in making this anthology an organic whole with its constituents. However, concurrently, we would like to warm the students, readers, scholars and literary community against the ongoing plagiarism that we encountered in the course of editing the articles submitted to us for publication. Though we have made every attempt to keep away from such transgression and incongruity, yet their utter absence cannot be taken for granted. Therefore, the individual scholar, not the editors, will be responsible for any copyright violation.

We convey our heart-felt gratitude and appreciation to our well-wishers whose incessant applaud and admiration enabled us to present this book in present form. Of course all that have been said right above was not feasible without generous and altruistic support of Mr. Praveen Mittal, his blessed son Mr. Neeraj Mittal and the all staff of B R Publishing Corporation for readily accepting our proposal and publishing this book in present form.