Indira Goswami

This book engages with the life and works of Indira Goswami the first Assamese woman writer to win the highest national literary award the Jnanpith Award in 2001. From sociological treatises to a springboard of a socio-political milieu Goswami’s texts are intersections of the local and the global the popular and the canonical. The writer’s penchant for transcending boundaries gives a new contour and shape to the social and cultural domains in her texts. That every character is a representative of the society that the context comes alive in every evocation of class struggle power play caste discrimination and gendered narratives add an interesting semantic load to her texts. While tracing the trajectories discussed above this book foregrounds Goswami’s act of going beyond the margins of varied kinds both abstract and concrete in search of egalitarian and democratic spaces of life. The book looks at Indira Goswami’s works with a special emphasis on the author situated within the Assamese literary canon. It not only discusses the themes and issues within her writing but also focuses on the distinct language and style she uses.