How does a writer discuss her creative process and her views on a writer’s role in society? How do her comments on writing relate to her works? The Hindi writer Krishna Sobti (1925-2019) is known primarily as a novelist. However, she also extensively wrote about her views on the creative process, the figure of the writer, historical writing, and the position of writers within the public sphere. This study is the first to examine in detail the relationship between Sobti’s views on poetics as exposed in her non-fictional texts and her own literary practice. The writer’s self-representation is analysed through her use of metaphors to explain her creative process. Sobti’s construction of the figure of the writer is then put in parallel with her idiosyncratic use of language as a representation of the heterogeneous voices of her characters and with her conception of literature as a space where time and memory can be "held." At the same time, by delving into Sobti’s position in the debate around "women’s writing" (especially through the creation of a male double, the failed writer Hashmat), and into her views on literature and politics, this book also reflects on the literary debates of the post-Independence Hindi literary sphere.

"The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures is a compilation of scholarship on Indian literature from the 19th century to the present in a range of Indian languages. On one hand, because of reasons associated with national academic structures, publishing resources, and global visibility, English writing gets privileged over all the other linguistic traditions in the scholarship on Indian literatures. On the other hand, within the scholarship on regional language literary productions (in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, etc.), the critical works and the surveys focus only on that particular language and therefore frequently suffer from a lack of comparative breadth and/or global access. Both reflect the paradigm of monolingualism within which much literary scholarship on Indian literature takes place. This handbook instead focuses on the multilingual pathways through which modern Indian literature gets constituted. It features cutting-edge literary criticism from at least seventeen languages, and on traditional literary genres as well as more recent ones like graphic novels. It shows the deep connections and collaborations across genres, languages, nations, and regions that produce a literature of diverse contact zones, generating innovations on form, aesthetics, and technique. Foregrounding themes such as modernity and modernism, gender, caste, diaspora, and political resistance, the book collects an array of perspectives on this vast topic"--

This book engages with the life and works of the distinctive Hindi writer Krishna Sobti, known for making bold choices of themes in her writing. Also known for her extraordinary use of the Hindi language, she emerges as an embodiment of a counter archive. While presenting the author in the context of her times, this volume offers critical perspectives to define her position in the canon of modern Indian literature. Alongside important critical essays on her, the inclusion of excerpts from the translations of some major works by the author, such as Zindaginama, Mitro Marjani and Ai Ladki, greatly facilitate an understanding of her worldview and the contexts in which she wrote. Also included in this book are some of her reflections on the creative process that help in unfolding the complexities of her characters and her specific approach to the language of fiction. Writing in the times of significant political and cultural churnings, her fiction includes themes such as the Partition of the country and its aftermath, women and their sexuality, desire and violence, history and memory. Her writing subverted the dominant narratives of the times and de-historicised history. Her own essays and other critical writings demonstrate the way Krishna Sobti’s characters are abundantly polyphonic and seeped in social realities. They encapsulate the cultural milieu of their times and serve as a site of resistance to the dominant archive of power. Her interactions with her fellow Hindi writers such as Nirmal Verma and Krishan Baldev Vaid, as also her letters, her memoirs and the reminiscences of others, further enrich this volume and establish her unique voice. Part of the ‘Writer in Context’ Series, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of Indian literature, English literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, gender studies, translation studies and Partition studies.

Following Françoise d’Eaubonne’s creation of the term “ecofeminism” in 1974, scholars around the world have explored ways that the degradation of the environment and the subjugation of women are linked. In the nearly three decades since the publication of the classical work Ecofeminism by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva in 1993, several collections have appeared that apply ecofeminism to literary criticism, also known as feminist ecocriticism. The most recent of these include anthologies that emphasize international perspectives, furthering the comparative task launched by Mies and Shiva. To date, however, there have been no books devoted to gaining a broad-based understanding of feminist ecocriticism in India, understood in its own terms. Our new volume Indian Feminist Ecocriticism offers a survey of literature as seen through an ecofeminist lens by Indian scholars, which places contemporary literary analysis through a sampling of its diverse languages and in the context of millennia-old mythic traditions of India.

It is sometime in the first decade of the 20th century. The British Imperialists have been in India for over 150 years. However, life in the small village of Shahpur in undivided Punjab has remained largely unchanged. The menfolk look to the wealthy and worldly-wise Shahji and his benevolent younger brother Kashi for support and advice, while it is Shahji's wife's home and hearth that is the centre of all celebrations for the women. Local disputes, trade, politics, a trickling of news from the Lahore newspaper are all discussed every evening at the Shah's haveli. But as the Ghadar Movement gains momentum elsewhere in Punjab and in Bengal, bringing into focus the excesses of the British, the simple village of Shahpur cannot help looking at itself. The discontent has set in. Krishna Sobti's magnum opus, Zindaginama brilliantly captures the story of India through a village where people of both faiths coexisted peacefully, living off the land.