V. S. Naipaul, the mouthpiece of displacement and rootlessness is one of the most significant contemporary English Novelists. Of Indian descent, born in Trinidad, and educated in England, Naipaul has been placed as a rootless nomad in the cultural world, always on a voyage to find his identity. The expatriate sensibility of Naipaul haunts him throughout his fiction and other works, he becomes spokesman of emigrants. He delineates the Indian immigrant’s dilemma, his problems and plights in a fast-changing world. In his works one can find the agony of an exile; the pangs of a man in search of meaning and identity: a dare-devil who has tried to explore myths and see through fantasies. Out of his dilemma is born a rich body of writings which has enriched diasporic literature and the English language.
David Pryce Jones calls Naipaul a novelist with an over-hanging sense of loss. According to Jones, diminishing is a favorite word of his, narrow is another[1]. Naipaul’s concerns are fantasy and myth, homelessness and quest. He frequently uses worlds like dereliction, violation, loss, illusion, fraud, corruption, degradation and idle. Despite these overwhelming concerns and repetitions, each of Naipaul’s novels has a different texture and shape. The loosely connected stories of Miguel Street, the mock-history of Ganesh in the Mystic Masseur, the satiric political drama in The Suffrage Of Elvira, the brooding and expansive A House For Mr. Bishwas, the bitter sweet memoir of Ralph Singh in The Mimic Men, and the violent world of Guerillas and A Bend in the River are manifestations of different dimensions of the modern dilemmas that confront the global village that the world is coming to be. Overall a critical consensus has emerged that Nai...
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...Harmondeworth: Penguin Books. 1970, Pg; 72
5. Naipaul. V.S., the Middle Passage. Harmondeworth: Penguin Books. 1970.
6. Naipaul. V.S., an Area of Darkness. Harmondsworth: Prnguine Books, 1964, Pg. 33
7. Peter Web, Edward, Robert, the Master of Novel. Newsweek 18th Aug., 1980.
8. Hammer, Critical Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul. London: Heinmann, 1979.
9. Bryden, Ronald, an Interview with V.S. Naipaul. The Listner 2ndMarch, 1973.
10. Hammer, Critical Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul. London: Heinmann, 1979.
11. Walsh William, V.S. Naipaul. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1973.
12. Naipaul, V.S., Literary Occasions: Essays. New Delhi: Picador. 2003
13. Naipaul, V.S., Literary Occasions: Eassays. New Delhi: India Log, 2002
14. Naipaul, V.S., India: A Wounded Civilization. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983. All subsequent reference with page numbers are from this edition.
In an article entitled, Exciting Tales of Exotic Dark India: Aravind Adiga 's The White Tiger, author Ana Cristina Mendes describes the many attributes of the poor proletariat class of India. Mendes shows how “dark India,”
In “My Two Lives”, Jhumpa Lahiri tells of her complicated upbringing in Rhode Island with her Calcutta born-and-raised parents, in which she continually sought a balance between both her Indian and American sides. She explains how she differs from her parents due to immigration, the existent connections to India, and her development as a writer of Indian-American stories. “The Freedom of the Inbetween” written by Sally Dalton-Brown explores the state of limbo, or “being between cultures”, which can make second-generation immigrants feel liberated, or vice versa, trapped within the two (333). This work also discusses how Lahiri writes about her life experiences through her own characters in her books. Charles Hirschman’s “Immigration and the American Century” states that immigrants are shaped by the combination of an adaptation to American...
Glick, J, Schaffer, C. 1991. "The Indian Homeland." U.S. News and World Report. July 8, vol.111, n2, pg26 (6)
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
Chapter Thesis: South and Southeast Asia in between the periods 1500 B.C.E to 600 C.E., with their growth of Indian civilization. FOUNDATIONS OF INDIAN CIVILIZATION, 1500 B.C.E.-300 C.E. India is known as subcontinent by the cause of how big it is and how it’s a secluded area.
This research study focuses at negotiating the shifting identities of immigrants and their traumas in postcolonial literature with reference to Lahiri’s fiction. The suffering of every immigrant in achieving a shelter and identity in a foreign land often leads to loss of identity. The qualms, agitation and nervousness of immigrants often increase the issues of identity, and immigrants often feel alienated in the midst of exotic land, they even start to think about achieving new identities. Stuart Hall (1987) a famous cultural theorist discusses the issues of cultural identity and migration as he says “Migration is a one way trip. There is no “home” to go back to”. Change in the place and ambience totally change the circumstances in the lives of immigrants in Lahiri’s fiction, they often try to cling to their own cultural identity and costumes. But the cultural effect is often so strong that it deeply affects the identity of immigrants and they ultimately try to change their identities. Immigrants make an absurd attempt to get mingled in the culture of foreign country. Hall discusses “Cultural identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference” (235).
Norton, James H.K. India and South Asia. 9th ed. New York: Mc Graw Hill, 2010.
4.Khair Tabish. Man Of Glass, New Delhi: Harper Collin and The India Today Group 2010. Print Abbreviated as MOG in subsequent quotations in the text.
Recent years have witnessed a large number of Indian English fiction writers who have stunned the literary world with their works. The topics dealt with are contemporary and populist and the English is functional, communicative and unpretentious. Novels have always served as a guide, a beacon in a conflicting, chaotic world and continue to do so. A careful study of Indian English fiction writers show that there are two kinds of writers who contribute to the genre of novels: The first group of writers include those who are global Indians, the diasporic writers, who are Indians by birth but have lived abroad, so they see Indian problems and reality objectively. The second group of writers are those born and brought up in India, exposed to the attitudes, morale and values of the society. Hence their works focus on the various social problems of India like the plight of women, unemployment, poverty, class discrimination, social dogmas, rigid religious norms, inter caste marriages, breakdown of relationships etc.
India is well known as a nation of contrasts, and the nation itself is a paradox. It is one of the world’s oldest known civilizations, yet it has only existed as the nation the world now know sit for 67 years. Similarly, it has produced some of the most important contributions to mathematics, science, philosophy, and trade, yet it is still considered to be a developing nation. The country’s history is a long, winding journey that has led it to its current state – the world’s largest democracy featuring both the same technological advancements enjoyed by the first world and the same challenges and problems faced by the rest of the developing world.
Almost all the characters feel the effect of the ocean on their lives in one way or another. The novel illustrates the intimate relation between “History, Politics, and bodies of water” through its attention to the Indian Ocean. Ghosh emphasizes the linked histories of the travel of Opium, lascars, and migrant labour and contest their marginal place in the colonial
Nicholas B. Dirks. (2011). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press
...nial institution--one voice which would articulate their own sense of national identity. But exploration of these societies, and the literature produced by postcolonial authors and poets illustrates that there is a veritable infinite number of differing circumstances inherent in each postcolonial society, and, consequently, in each piece of literature produced by postcolonial writers. If one is to read this literature in a way which will shed some light on the postcolonial condition, one must understand and adopt the theory that we are all walking amalgamations of our own unique cultures and traditions. We are all always struggling with our own identities, personal and national. We must understand that there is no "one true voice" representing an easily identifiable postcolonial condition, but, instead, each author is his or her own voice and must be read as such.
Mishra, Vijay. "The Texts of Mother India." After Europe.Ed. Stephen Slemon and Helen Tiffin. Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1989. 119-37.
Mann, Harold H. 1929. “ The Agriculture of India.” Annals of the American Academy of Rolitical and Social Science. 145: 72-81. Accessed November 15, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1016888