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Introduction: Beyond Borders and Boundaries
- State University of New York Press
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xiii Introduction Beyond Borders and Boundaries CHITRA SANKARAN “LIKE THE OPIUM that forms its subject, the narrative becomes increasingly powerful and addictive as it takes hold,”1 writes William Dalrymple, author of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty on Amitav Ghosh’s most recent novel, Sea of Poppies, which was published in 2008. The novel, the first in a projected trilogy, made it to the Man Booker Prize shortlist (though not winning it), the first of Amitav Ghosh’s novels to do so. It later went on to win the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2009. But Ghosh is no stranger either to international awards or to controversies surrounding them, as the most recent Dan David Prize for his literary achievements, partially funded by Tel-Aviv University, which he won along with Margaret Atwood in May 2010, illustrates. Indeed, 2007, the year previous to the publication of Sea of Poppies, was another year of achievements for Amitav Ghosh. He won the Grinzane Cavour Prize, an annual literary prize instituted by the Instituto Italiano di Cultura for literary contributions that have an international perspective ; and he was also awarded the prestigious Padmashree by the government of India in recognition of his distinguished contributions to the field of literature. It is therefore timely that the accomplishments of this now established diasporic Indian writer are recorded and analyzed. This volume has been planned with a view to presenting a comprehensive collection of critical essays that discuss all of Ghosh’s fictional output thus far. The essays are by scholars from around the world who are currently working on Amitav Ghosh, with several of the contributors based in Southeast Asia, a space crucial to the history of Indian diaspora and indeed also to Ghosh’s fictional landscape. These are important and necessary xiv CHITRA SANKARAN voices to add to the critical conversation on Ghosh. The volume aims to bring together several viewpoints not constrained by any pre-worked conceptual framework but that attempt in their varied ways to demonstrate the far-reaching scope of the scholarship that surrounds Ghosh’s works to date. Published outside India, with only Indian diasporics or non-Indian scholars contributing, this volume can legitimately lay claim to being the first truly international critical volume on Amitav Ghosh, if one succumbs to such essentializing categories. The volume also includes an in-depth interview with the author, entitled “Diasporic Predicaments: An Interview with Amitav Ghosh,” that touches on a broad array of issues ranging from the revival of colonial ideologies in certain Western nations to writing in translation. The interview is particularly significant in that it complements, extends, and deepens the scope of the scholarly discussions that follow. These discussions in themselves are wide-ranging. They identify and examine several of the interesting and/or contestable issues that emerge in all of his published novels, from his deployment of cross-generic narrative techniques to his concern to extricate and vocalize subaltern subjectivities. Over the last decade or more, Amitav Ghosh has emerged as one of the foremost writers in not just the Indian, but the global fiction scene. His itinerate and diasporic existence from his childhood onward would perhaps provide a clue to the pervasive occurrence of diverse and eclectic themes in his fictional writing, all clustering around the notion of the diaspora. Born in India in 1956, he spent his childhood in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and northern India. He was educated in Delhi, Oxford, and Egypt and has taught in several Indian and American universities. In 1999, Ghosh joined the faculty of Queens College, City University of New York, as a distinguished professor in comparative literature. Since 2005, he has been a visiting professor at the English Department at Harvard University. Amitav Ghosh’s recent relocation to India in the past year opens out an additional dimension to his conscious self-positioning as an “expatriate”—one that can be usefully perceived in relation to his views regarding this condition, expressed in the interview that follows this introduction. Ghosh is the author of seven novels and four volumes of essays. Apart from these, he also has several other prose writings, such as newspaper articles , articles in magazines, commentaries, and essays. Ghosh’s deep engagement with the human condition vis-à-vis its larger global causatum, reflected in his fictional endeavors as well, has procured for him international recognition in the form of literary prizes and awards. It is no wonder that reviewers like Katherine Sale, writing for the Financial Times...