Meenakshi Bharat: A House for Mr Biswas: Critical Perspectives

Happy Australia Day!

and to friends in India, Happy Republic Day!

I am very excited about the announcement of the release of a book edited by my co-editor, colleague and dear friend, Dr Meenakshi Bharat.

This collection is essential reading for those studying and researching Indian literature, postcolonial literary theory and transnational fiction. While this book is of particular interest to those who enjoy his work, it is also a fascinating introduction for those who haven’t yet read V S Naipaul.

Meenakshi is Associate Professor at Sri Venkateswara College at the University of Delhi; an executive on the committee of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia; an author and editor. She has presented at conferences, seminars and symposia around the world, including Sydney University, University of Technology Sydney, Wollongong University.

V.S.NAIPAUL’S

A House for Mr Biswas: Critical Perspectives

Edited by

Meenakshi Bharat

This volume revisits V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas about 50 years after its first publication in the year 1961, and critiques what constitutes its abiding appeal. Fourteen leading scholars from across the globe posit seminal critical responses to this now nearly an iconic novel, noticing the deep focus it wields with consummate artistry on the seemingly trivial but arresting aspirations of a third-world journalist. They also revaluate issues and concerns such as the autobiographical mode of writing, the play of metaphor or metonymy, and the role of the theories of creolization vis-à-vis this text. Each of the essays looks at the novel closely and each from an inimitably distinctive point of view.  Together they make for an invaluable collection of fresh insights into Biswasdom and Naipaulia.

Contributors: Cameron Fae Bushnell; Debaditya Bhattacharya; Florence Lebaune-Demeule; Gillian Dooley; Gregory Wilson; Harish Trivedi; John Thieme; Meenakshi Bharat; Meenakshi Mukherjee; Neil ten Kortenaar; Ratna Raman; Savi Munjal; Vijay Mishra; Vijay Maharaj

Meenakshi Bharat teaches in Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. She is a writer, translator, reviewer and critic. Her special interests include children’s literature, women’s fiction and English studies — areas which she has extensively researched. She was responsible for the India section in The Cambridge Book of Children’s Literature.  Apart from the various articles and reviews, her published books are: The Ultimate Colony  (2003),  Desert in Bloom: Indian Women Writers of  Fiction in  English  (2004), Filming  the Line of Control (2008), Rushdie the Novelist  (2009),  an edition of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss,   two volumes of Indo-Australian short fiction entitled Fear Factor: Terror Incognito, ed from Picador (India 2009, Australia, 2010) and  Alien  Shores,  from Brass Monkey Books (Australia,  2012).  A children’s book, Little Elephant throws a Party  is in the press.  

ISBN: 978-93-82178-02-6                                                                  Rs. 650

Contents

        Acknowledgements

Introduction: A New House for Mr Biswas

The Context

1.     Looking for Mr Biswas       

        John Thieme                                                                                        

2.     The Many Houses of Mr Naipaul

Harish Trivedi                                                                                       

 

3.     Plantation Culture, Naipaul and  the House

        Vijay Mishra

4.     Mr Biswas: Paragon of Creole Virtues

        Vijay Maharaj

 

5.     Foundational Acts: Enunciating a West Indian  Literary

        Tradition in Naipaul’s Mr Biswas

        Cameron Fae Bushnell                                                                       

 

The Text

6.   Colonial Maladies, Postcolonial Cures

       Meenakshi Bharat

7.     Interstitial Conundrums: Understanding

        Liminality in A House for Mr Biswas

        Savi Munjal                                                                                          

 

8.     A Father Among Many Others: Re-reading

        A House for Mr Biswas

        Debaditya Bhattacharya                                                                   

9.     Narrative Displacement: Constructing Mohun Biswas’s

        House of Fiction

        Florence Labaune-Demeule                                                            

10.  ‘Mr Biswas Finds a Home in the World on Paper’

       Neil ten Kortenaar                                                                              

11.  ‘His own Portion of the Earth’: The Rhetoric of

        Alienation and Separation in Naipaul’s

        A House for Mr Biswas

        Gregory Wilson                                                                                  

Text and Texts

12. Looking Back in Anger: The Transformation of

        Childhood Memories in two West Indian Novels

        Gillian Dooley                                                                                     

 

13. The House and the Road: Two Modes of 

        Autobiographical Fiction 

        Meenakshi Mukherjee                                                                       

 

After-Text

14.  No House for Shama Biswas

        Ratna Raman

       Contributors         

                                                     

This book is a worthwhile addition to any library. Please pass the word and ask your library acquisitions officer to add it to your library.