"Rivers are the arteries of human existence; they nurture lives and civilisations. Although literature has dealt with rivers, river fiction as a genre is an emergent field. This is surprising especially in a country like India where one of the most ancient human civilisations flourished on the banks of the Indus, and rivers are deified and worshipped. This volume which brings together multiple perspectives on river fiction thus addresses a serious lack in literary scholarship and is sure to make a seminal contribution to the field. It puts the human in conversation withthe non-human, by bringing together human narratives that are played out against the background of rivers and other natural forces. What makes it more valuable is this acknowledgement of the intersectional nature of riverine ecology, emphasising the inter-connectedness of our existence on this fragile planet."Mini Chandran, Professor of English, & Head, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India"Rivers have been running through the human landscape since time immemorial; they meander through spaces both mythical and actual, enlivening lives both quotidian and fantastic. In India, where rivers create labyrinths of communication and culture, it is no wonder that there must be an attempt to trace their literary and cultural cartography through rivers. This is what Subhadeep Ray has done in his edited book River Fiction of India: Intersectional Flows of Narratives, Geographies, and Histories (Routledge). The book offers an alternative approach to Indian literature and defies the long practice of literary historiography that follows the grand narratives of History. For this book, History becomes ‘Histories’, pluralistic and fragmented, which appears as the final section of the book; the previous two sections are ‘Narratives’ and ‘Geographies’. The structure of the book thus resembles the course of a river, where local and individual narratives commingle to form a mighty stream that flows through various cultural and cartographical geographies of India, finally submitting itself to the innumerable waves of temporality. The book provides a fresh and innovative way of looking at Indian literatures and cultures, including contemporary issues of environment and ecology. Researchers and scholars working on South Asia may find this book interesting."Parthasarathi Bhaumik, Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, & Associate Professor (Visiting), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo, Japan
