Postcolonial Urban Outcasts: City Margins in South Asian Literature

Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright Page......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 List of Figures......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction: Whose City?......Page 14 PART I: Urban Outcasts, Urban Subalterns......Page 32 1 Recasting the Outcast: Hyderabad and Hyderabadi Subjectivities in Two Literary Texts......Page 34 2 The Margins of Postcolonial Urbanity: Reading Critical Irrealism in Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Fiction......Page 52 3 “Someone called India”: Urban Space and the Tribal Subject in Mahasweta Devi’s “Douloti the Bountiful”......Page 69 4 “Stuck at Pause”: Representations of the Comatose City in Delhi Calm......Page 85 PART II: The National, The Global, and the Diaspora......Page 106 5 Unmoored: Passing, Slumming, and Return-Writing in New India......Page 108 6 Lahore Lahore Hai: Bapsi Sidhwa and Mohsin Hamid’s City Fictions......Page 126 7 Between Aspiration and Imagination: Exploring Native Cosmopolitanism in Adib Khan’s Spiral Road and Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti......Page 144 8 Portrayal of a Dystopic Dhaka: On Diasporic Reproductions of Bangladeshi Urbanity......Page 162 PART III: The Space of the Margins......Page 180 9 Imag(in)ing the City: A Study of Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi......Page 182 10 Gendering Place and Possibility in Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence and Kavery Nambisan’s A Town Like Ours......Page 200 11 Delhi at the Margins: Heterotopic Imagination, Bricolage, and Alternative Urbanity in Trickster City......Page 217 PART IV: Forms of Urban Outcasting......Page 234 12 Carl Muller’s Palimpsestic Urban Elegy in Colombo: A Novel......Page 236 13 The Fiction of Anosh Irani: The Magic of a Traumatized Community......Page 252 14 New Capital? Representing Bangalore in Recent Crime Fiction......Page 270 List of Contributors......Page 286 Index......Page 290 MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Figures 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction: Whose City? 14 PART I: Urban Outcasts, Urban Subalterns 32 1 Recasting the Outcast: Hyderabad and Hyderabadi Subjectivities in Two Literary Texts 34 2 The Margins of Postcolonial Urbanity: Reading Critical Irrealism in Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Fiction 52 3 “Someone called India”: Urban Space and the Tribal Subject in Mahasweta Devi’s “Douloti the Bountiful” 69 4 “Stuck at Pause”: Representations of the Comatose City in Delhi Calm 85 PART II: The National, The Global, and the Diaspora 106 5 Unmoored: Passing, Slumming, and Return-Writing in New India 108 6 Lahore Lahore Hai: Bapsi Sidhwa and Mohsin Hamid’s City Fictions 126 7 Between Aspiration and Imagination: Exploring Native Cosmopolitanism in Adib Khan’s Spiral Road and Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti 144 8 Portrayal of a Dystopic Dhaka: On Diasporic Reproductions of Bangladeshi Urbanity 162 PART III: The Space of the Margins 180 9 Imag(in)ing the City: A Study of Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi 182 10 Gendering Place and Possibility in Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence and Kavery Nambisan’s A Town Like Ours 200 11 Delhi at the Margins: Heterotopic Imagination, Bricolage, and Alternative Urbanity in Trickster City 217 PART IV: Forms of Urban Outcasting 234 12 Carl Muller’s Palimpsestic Urban Elegy in Colombo: A Novel 236 13 The Fiction of Anosh Irani: The Magic of a Traumatized Community 252 14 New Capital? Representing Bangalore in Recent Crime Fiction 270 List of Contributors 286 Index 290