Asian Studies 211 - South Asian English Fiction

Modern South Asian writers in English have imagined diverse ways of belonging in and emerging from South Asia, in modernity, in families, nations and the world. We will examine these themes in the novels and short stories of Indian and South Asian writers. Writers studied include R. K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Bapsi Sidhwa, Daniyal Moinuddin, Arundhati Roy, Monica Ali, Farahad Zama, Amitav Ghosh, and Jhumpa Lahiri. We will read these and other writers with reference to colonial and postcolonial identities, nationalism and global migrations, gender, and the politics and aesthetic of writing in English at various points in South Asian and world history.