The Nation of India in Contemporary Indian Literature

This book discusses selected works by six contemporary Indian novelists writing in English - Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Nayantara Sahgal, Arundhati Roy, Ruchir Joshi and Rupa Bajwa - all of whom have made the Indian nation a central theme in their fiction.All these writers respond, in varying ways, to the idea of India as united in diversity, a construct most readily associated with the nationalist vision of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister.In considering India's past and looking towards the future, they struggle with and attempt to extend the available language of cultural diversity.

Anna Guttman is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Lakehead University, Canada, where she teaches postcolonial literature.