Reading India in a Transnational Era

<p>This anthology demonstrates the significance of Raja Rao’s writing in the broader spectrum of anti-colonial, postcolonial, and diasporic writing in the 20th century. In addition to highlighting Rao’s significant presence in Indian writing, the volume presents a range of previously unpublished material which contextualises Rao’s work within 20th-century modernist, postmodernist, and postcolonial trends. Exploring both his fictional and non-fictional works, <i>Reading India in a Transnational Era</i> engages with issues of subaltern agency and national belonging, authenticity, subjectivity, internationalism, multicultural politics, postcolonialism, and literary and cultural representation through language and translation.</p><p>A literary volume that discusses gender and identity on both socio-political grounds, apart from dealing with Rao’s linguistic experimentations in a transnational era, will be of interest among scholars and researchers of English, postcolonial and world literature, cultural theory, and Asian studies.</p> <p>Introduction <b>Part I: Re-routing Raja Rao’s Politics, National Identity and Postcolonial Criticism </b><b>1.</b> The Lure of Monarchy in the Pursuit of Truth: Raja Rao’s Royalism in <i>The Serpent and the Rope </i><b>2.</b> From National to Metaphysical: Raja Rao’s Idea of India in a Transnational Era <b>3.</b> Resisting the British Empire: Raja Rao’s Two Political Anthologies <i>Changing India</i> and <i>Whither India? </i><b>4.</b> Threads of Identity: Caste, Clothing and Community in Raja Rao’s <i>Kanthapura </i><b>5.</b> <i>The Cat and Shakespeare</i>, the Problem of the Ego-Self, and the Vagaries of Literary Reputation <b>Part II: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Gender, and the Novel </b><b>6.</b> <i>Comrade Kirillov</i>: ‘A New Novel’ Newly Understood <b>7.</b> Women and the Narrative of Nationalism in Raja Rao’s <i>The Cow of the Barricades </i><b>8.</b> Posthumanism in Raja Rao’s <i>The Cat and Shakespeare</i>: Redrawing the Boundaries <b>9.</b> The Cat and the Chessmaster: Deconstructing ‘Play’ in Two Novels by Raja Rao <b>10.</b> The Unknown Quantity: Mathematics and Metaphysics in Raja Rao’s <i>The</i><i> Chessmaster and His Moves </i><b>Part III: Multicultural Politics, Habitat and Translation </b><b>11.</b> ‘I Am Not Gandhi’: <i>Kanthapura</i> and the Problem of Allegory <b>12.</b> Nature and Landscape: An Evolutionary Psychological Analysis of Raja Rao’s Writing <b>13.</b> Search in Confusion: Reading Transnational Friendships in Raja Rao’s <i>Kanthapura</i> and Ahmed Ali’s <i>Twilight in Delhi </i><b>14.</b> On Translating Raja Rao in the Transnational Era <b>Part IV: Reminiscences </b>Raja Rao at his Bed Table. Raja Rao: The Untold Story. Poem (for Raja Rao): Krishna. Afterword. </p>