Ruvani Ranasinha – författare

South Asian Writers in Twentieth-Century Britain is the first book to provide a historical account of the publication and reception of South Asian anglophone writing from the 1930s to the present, based on original archival research drawn from a range of publishing houses. This comparison of succeeding generations of writers who emigrated to, or were born in, Britain examines how the experience of migrancy, the attitudes towards migrant writers in the literary market place, and the critical reception of them, changed significantly throughout the twentieth century. Ranasinha shows how the aesthetic, cultural, and political context changed significantly for each generation, producing radically different kinds of writing and transforming the role of the postcolonial writer of South Asian origin.The extensive use of original materials from publishers' archives shows how shifting political, academic, and commercial agendas in Britain and North America influenced the selection, content, presentation, and consumption of many of these texts. The differences between writers of different generations can thus in part be understood in terms of the different demands of their publishers and expectations of readers in each decade. Writers from different generations are paired accordingly in each chapter: Nirad Chaudhuri (1897-1999) with Tambimuttu (1915-83); Ambalavener Sivanandan (born 1923) with Kamala Markandaya (born 1924); Salman Rushdie (born 1947) with Farrukh Dhondy (born 1944); and Hanif Kureishi (born 1954) with Meera Syal (born 1963). Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, Attia Hosain, V.S Naipaul, and Aubrey Menen are also discussed.

In this book, leading scholars working on urban South Asia chart new forms of literature about contemporary Delhi.Incorporating original contributions by Delhi-based commentators and covering significant new themes and genres, it updates current critical understanding of how contemporary literature has registered the momentous economic and social forces reshaping India’s major cities. This timely volume responds not only to the contextual challenge of a Delhi transformed by economic liberalisation and commercial growth into a global megacity, but also to the emergent formal and generic changes through which this process has been monitored and critiqued in writing. The collection includes studies of the city as a disabling metropolis, as a space of marginal (electronic) text, as a zone of gendered spatiality and sexual violence, and as a terrain in which ‘urban villagers’ have been displaced by the growing city. It also provides close analyses of emerging genres such as urban comix, digital narratives, literary reportage, and city biography.Delhi: New Literatures of the Megacity will be of interest to students and researchers in disciplines ranging from postcolonial and global literature to cultural studies, civic history, and South Asian and urban studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

This sourcebook offers alternative ways of conceiving of the making of modern Britain. It intervenes in contemporary debates about Britain’s heritage by illuminating the remarkable, yet still overlooked, impact that South Asians had on shaping the nature of British culture, politics and national identity during the period 1870-1950. The first anthology of primary material interdisciplinary study of the history of the South Asian presence in Britain over the period, it selects a wide range of official and non-official archival sources. and identifies four key areas of South Asian impact – minority rights, war, culture and reception, and representation. The current relevance of South Asian engagement is underscored, projecting contemporary national concerns back into the past.

This invaluable sourcebook intervenes in contemporary debates about Britain’s heritage by illuminating the remarkable, yet still overlooked, impact that South Asians had on shaping the nature of British culture, politics and national identity during the period 1870-1950. The first anthology of primary material interdisciplinary devoted to the study of the history of the South Asian presence in Britain over the period, it selects a wide range of official and non-official archival sources. It identifies four key areas of South Asian impact – minority rights, war, culture and reception, and representation. Highlighting the current relevance of South Asian engagement, it projects contemporary national concerns back into the past and offers alternative ways of conceiving of the making of modern Britain.

In this book, leading scholars working on urban South Asia chart new forms of literature about contemporary Delhi.Incorporating original contributions by Delhi-based commentators and covering significant new themes and genres, it updates current critical understanding of how contemporary literature has registered the momentous economic and social forces reshaping India’s major cities. This timely volume responds not only to the contextual challenge of a Delhi transformed by economic liberalisation and commercial growth into a global megacity, but also to the emergent formal and generic changes through which this process has been monitored and critiqued in writing. The collection includes studies of the city as a disabling metropolis, as a space of marginal (electronic) text, as a zone of gendered spatiality and sexual violence, and as a terrain in which ‘urban villagers’ have been displaced by the growing city. It also provides close analyses of emerging genres such as urban comix, digital narratives, literary reportage, and city biography.Delhi: New Literatures of the Megacity will be of interest to students and researchers in disciplines ranging from postcolonial and global literature to cultural studies, civic history, and South Asian and urban studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

This book is the first comparative analysis of a new generation of diasporic Anglophone South Asian women novelists including Kiran Desai, Tahmima Anam, Monica Ali, Kamila Shamsie and Jhumpa Lahiri from a feminist perspective.