Indian Genre Fiction: Pasts and Future Histories

224 Pages·2019·1.111 MB·English

by  Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Aakriti Mandhwani and Anwesha Maity

‘Genre fiction, particularly but not only in English, has been growing
in popularity in India. This anthology is significant and necessary . . .
It maps overlaps and contrasts between genre fiction in seven major
Indian languages, and well combines literary exegesis with theoretical
and historical readings . . . Drawing upon both Indian and non-Indian
theoretical texts, the book does not just test Western definitions of
genre fiction against the hard reality to genre texts from India, it also
opens up space for a re-definition of such Western perceptions . . .
A pioneering study that is interesting and well-timed’.
Tabish Khair, author and Associate Professor,
Department of English, University of Aarhus, Denmark
STUDIES IN GLOBAL GENRE FICTION
Series Editors: Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, University
of Oslo, Norway and Taryne Jade Taylor, Embry-
Riddle Aeronautical University, USA
Studies in Global Genre Fiction offers original insights into the history
of genre literature while contesting two hierarchies that constrain
global genre fiction studies: (1) Anglophone literature and other
global language literatures and (2) literary fiction and genre fiction.
The series explores the exchanges between different literary cultures
that form aesthetic concerns and the specific literary, sociopolitical,
geographical, economic, and historical forces that shape genre fiction
globally. A key focus is understudied genre fictions from the ‘global
South’ – where geographical location or language often confines
works to the margins of the global publishing industry, international
circulation, and academic scrutiny, even if they may be widely read in
their own specific contexts.
Contributions to this series investigate the points of disruption,
intersection and flows between literary and genre fiction. The series
analyses cross-cultural influences in literary classifications, translation,
transcreation, localization, production, and distribution while
capturing the rich history of world and global literatures.
Editorial Advisory Board
Takayuki Tatsumi (Keio University, Japan)
Dale Knickerbocker (East Carolina University, USA)
Pawel Frelik (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Joan Gordon (Nassau Community College/Science Fiction Studies, USA)
Amy J. Ransom (Central Michigan University, USA)
Farah Mendlesohn (Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy, UK)
Rana Issa (American University of Beirut, Lebanon)
Alexis Brooks de Vita (Texas Southern University, USA)
M. Elizabeth Ginway (University of Florida, USA)
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo, Norway)
Abhijit Gupta (Jadavpur University, India)
Suparno Banerjee (Texas State University, USA)
Isiah Lavender III (Louisiana State University, USA)
Book in this series
INDIAN GENRE FICTION
Pasts and Future Histories
Edited by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Aakriti
Mandhwani and Anwesha Maity
For more information about this series, please visit:
https://www.routledge.com/Studies-in-Global-Genre-Fiction/book-
series/SGGF

INDIAN GENRE FICTION
This volume maps the breadth and domain of genre literature in India
across seven languages (Tamil, Urdu, Bangla, Hindi, Odia, Marathi
and English) and nine genres for the first time. Over the last few
decades, detective/crime fiction and especially science fiction/fantasy
have slowly made their way into university curricula and consideration
by literary critics in India and the West. However, there has been no
substantial study of genre fiction in the Indian languages, least of all
from a comparative perspective. This volume, with contributions from
leading national and international scholars, addresses this lacuna in
critical scholarship and provides an overview of diverse genre fictions.
Using methods from literary analysis, book history and Indian
aesthetic theories, the volume throws light on the variety of contexts
in which genre literature is read, activated and used, from political
debates surrounding national and regional identities to caste and class
conflicts. It shows that Indian genre fiction (including pulp fiction,
comics and graphic novels) transmutes across languages, time periods,
in translation and through publication processes. While the book
focuses on contemporary postcolonial genre literature production, it
also draws connections to individual, centuries-long literary traditions
of genre literature in the Indian subcontinent. Further, it traces
contested hierarchies within these languages as well as current trends
in genre fiction criticism.
Lucid and comprehensive, this book will be of great interest to
academics, students, practitioners, literary critics and historians in
the fields of postcolonialism, genre studies, global genre fiction, media
and popular culture, South Asian literature, Indian literature, detective
fiction, science fiction, romance, crime fiction, horror, mythology,
graphic novels, comparative literature and South Asian studies. It will
also appeal to the informed general reader.
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay is a researcher at the Department of Culture
Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway. He
is the Editor-in-Chief of Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction
and Fantasy Research (Finfar, Finland) and Editor at the Museum
of Science Fiction’s Journal of Science Fiction (MOSF, Washington,
D.C.). He has formerly taught at the Universities of Oslo and Delhi,
and has been visiting researcher at the Science Fiction Foundation at
the University of Liverpool and the Evoke Lab (Calit2)/Department of
Informatics at the University of California-Irvine.
Aakriti Mandhwani is a researcher at the Department of South Asia,
Faculty of Languages and Cultures, SOAS, University of London, UK.
She works on North Indian middle-class reading practices through
the archive of the post-1947 commercial magazine and paperback in
Hindi. Her areas of interest include book history, popular literature,
intellectual history and urban studies. Her works include articles in
Modern Asian Studies and a volume on Hinglish edited by Francesca
Orsini and Ravikant Sharma (both forthcoming in 2018).
Anwesha Maity is a researcher at the Department of Comparative
Literature and Folklore Studies (CLFS), University of Wisconsin-
Madison, USA, from where she also obtained her doctoral degree.
Her research interests include science fiction and genre fiction,
postcolonial criticism, translation studies, and Sanskrit aesthetics.
She has published in Science Fiction Studies, Studies in the Fantastic
and Jadavpur University Essays and Studies.
INDIAN GENRE FICTION
Pasts and Future Histories
Edited by
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay,
Aakriti Mandhwani and
Anwesha Maity
First published 2019
by Routledge
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© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Bodhisattva
Chattopadhyay, Aakriti Mandhwani and Anwesha Maity;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Aakriti Mandhwani
and Anwesha Maity to be identified as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-1-138-55998-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-45616-9 (ebk)
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CONTENTS
List of contributors xi
Introduction: Indian genre fiction – languages,
literatures, classifications 1
BODHISATTVA CHATTOPADHYAY, AAKRITI MANDHWANI
AND ANWESHA MAITY
PART I
Emergence of distinctions 15
1 Literary and popular fiction in late colonial Tamil Nadu 17
PREETHA MANI
2 Homage to a ‘Magic-Writer’: the Mistrīz and Asrār
novels of Urdu 38
C.M. NAIM
3 A series of unfortunate events: natural calamities in
19th-century Bengali chapbooks 57
ARITRA CHAKRABORTI
4 Explorers of subversive knowledge: the science
fantasy of Leela Majumdar and Sukumar Ray 73
DEBJANI SENGUPTA
ix