Contemporary Diasporic South Asian Women's Fiction

Ruvani Ranasinha is a Reader in Postcolonial Literatures in the Department of English, King s College London

• Acknowledgements.- Introduction.- 1. Globalisation, labour, narrative and representation in Arundhati Roy, Monica Ali and Kiran Desai.- 2. War, violence and memory: gendered national imaginaries in  Tahmima Anam, Sorayya Khan and contemporary Sri Lankan women writers.- 3. Resistance and religion: gender, Islam and agency in Kamila Shamsie, Tahmima Anam, Monica Ali and Ameena Hussein.- 4. Migration, gender and globalisation in Jhumpa Lahiri.- 5. Women writing postcolonial cities: Jhumpa Lahiri, Kamila Shamsie and Tahmima Anam.- Afterword.- Bibliography.- Index.-

“The book examines the interlinkages of gender with the narratives of a globalised world, each existing in a complex relationship with nation-states, their imaginaries, and with cognate concepts of rootedness and belonging. … Ranasinha’s book is thus an important intervention in the critical debates around the political purchase of diasporic, transnational, and cosmopolitan writing.” (Divya Mehta, Textual Practice, Vol. 32 (6), 2018)“Ranasinha’s study, by fulfilling her promise of breadth across subcontinental and diasporic locations, enables future work that can then situate more extensive thematic readings within the frame she establishes. … studies advance feminist, postcolonial and literary studies through inclusion of postcolonial realism’s contributions to discussions of intimacy, form and space in South Asian women’s fiction.” (Anna Thomas, Interventions, Vol. 19 (3), 2017)“Ruvani Ranasinha’s new book provides an important re-evaluation of South Asian women writers, combining readings of canonical authors such as Arundhati Roy, Monica Ali and Kamila Shamsie with lesser-known figures such as Sorayya Khan and Tahmima Anam. … this book will undoubtedly prove to be a cornerstone critical text for the future development of postcolonial studies.” (Dominic Davies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2017)