FICTION AND SOCIETY: Narrativisation of Realities in the Novels of Shashi Deshpande and Githa Hariharan

The book, working through a close reading of the two writers—Shashi Deshpande and Githa Hariharan—explores the fluid and multi-layered nature of reality and its relationship to fiction. There can be no clear division between the two and they exist in a tenuous and magical relationship that cannot be easily dissolved by a return to the “real world”.

Both the writers have used storytelling traditions and techniques with which they work on (re)formulating our understanding of reality. Storytelling, which uses the memory as a fictionalizing agent, forms new patterns of transforming reality into a new construct. This goes on to destabilize underlying assumptions and helps us look afresh at socio-cultural realities from multiple viewpoints. Embedding of stories, both mythological and real, into the narrative, expands the narrative structure and lends an additional dimension to the novels.

The author takes the position that grounded in social, historical and political realities, the works of these two writers exhibit an intense postmodern self-reflexivity that allows for alternative visions of reality. This takes the study away from being confined to a feminist reading of the two contemporary great writers who have made a significant contribution to the world of literature.

Sarita Prabhakar has been teaching English at various postgraduate colleges in Rajasthan for over two decades. She has been an active participant in a number of national and international seminars and conferences and won admiration for her insight into the narrative devices of Indian fiction writers in English. Recently, she has edited an anthology of the orations of great Indians belonging mainly to pre-Gandhian era. Currently, she is posted at Government P.G. College, Dausa (Rajasthan).