SUNITI NAMJOSHI: The Artful Transgressor

Suniti Namjoshi, with five anthologies of poems and several works of fiction to her credit, is an important figure in contemporary Indian writing in English. The present book, the first full-length study of Namjoshi’s work, identifies transgression and transformation as the cardinal features of her oeuvre.

Vijayasree offers a close and critical reading of Namjoshi’s poetry and fiction, from her earliest poetry to Goja, her latest work, locating them within the context of contemporary debates on feminism, postcolonialism and diasporic writing. Namjoshi’s work is considered in relation to narrative technique, formal experimentation, revisionist myth-making, diasporic experience, and sexual politics.

Using insights from feminist and postcolonial theories, Vijayasree explores the diverse cultural influences that inform Namjoshi’s writing with its complex blend of eastern and western ideas, myths and modes of perception. Fables and fabulation also form an important part of Namjoshi’s work right from the Blue Donkey Fables, Feminist Fables to the present.

This wide-ranging, scholarly and accessible study provides a valuable resource for the student and general reader of Namjoshi’s work.

C. Vijayasree is Professor of English at Osmania University, Hyderabad, where she teaches courses in postcolonial literatures and women’s writing. Her other publications include: Robert Browning 2000 (1996), Mulk Raj Anand: The Raj and the Writer (1998) and Remapping Culture: The Nobel Laureates of the Last Decade (1998). She has edited the Telugu section of an anthology of short stories translated into English from South Indian languages entitled Routes (2000). She is presently working on a monograph on Srinivasa Iyengar for Sahitya Akademi.