The Novel in South and South East Asia Since 1945
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THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE NOVEL IN ENGLISH Volume Ten The Novel in South and South East Asia since 1945 EDITED BY Alex Tickell OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD \JNIVBRSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © the several contributors 2019 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2019 Impression: 1 Acknowledgemen~ All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the List of Contributor prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted General Editor's P1 by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the Editorial Note above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above Introduction You must not circulate this work in any other form Alex Tickell and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America Part I: South Asi, British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018955543 1. The Novel oflnc ISBN 978--0- 19- 874541-9 Rajeswari Sunder J Printed and bound by 2. The Novel of Pal CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRo 4YY Claire Chambers Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials 3. The Novel of Sri contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Ruvani Ranasinha 4. The Novel of Bar Kaiser Haq 5. Publishing and th Abhijit Gupta Themes and Genr, 6. End of Empire Hi Antoinette Burton 7. History and the Sc Tabish Khair Table of Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Contributors xi General Editor's Preface xiii Editorial Note xv Introduction xvii Alex Tickell Part I: South Asia 1. The Novel of India 3 Rajeswari Sunder Rajan 2. The Novel of Pakistan 44 Claire Chambers 3. The Novel of Sri Lanka 60 Ruvani Ranasinha 4. The Novel of Bangladesh 74 Kaiser Haq 5. Publishing and the History of the Book in South Asia 88 Abhijit Gupta Themes and Genres 6. End of Empire Histories in the post-1945 Novel 105 Antoinette Burton 7. History and the South Asian Novel 118 Tabish Khair vi / TA BLE O F CONTE NTS 8. Fiction and the Borderland: Partitions and Frontiers 130 Shuchi Kapila 23. The Novel of St Philip Holden 9. Gender, Sexuality, and the Family in South Asian Fiction 144 Kavita Daiya 24. The Novel ofM Pavan Kumar Mali 10. Globalization and the South Asian Novel 158 Kanishka Chowdhury 25. Language Policy Lily Rose Tope 11. Land, Water, Waste: Environment and Ecology in South Asian Fiction 172 Sharae Deckard 12. Caste Logics: Categorization, Combination, and the Contemporary Novel 187 Themes and Gen Toral]atin Gajarawala 13 . Genre Fiction in India 26. Writing Imperial 201 Priya]oshi Andrew Biswell 14. The Graphic Novel in South Asia 27. History, Memory 212 Charlotta Salmi Sharmani Patricia ( 28. Language in the l Ismail Talib Key Authors 29. Life-Writing, Tes1 Alex Tickell 15. R. K. Narayan 223 G.]. V. Prasad 30. Cold War Novels Derek C. Maus 16. Anita Desai 236 Shirley Chew 31. Genre Fiction in S 17. Salman Rushdie Kelly Yin Nga Tse 249 Florian Stadtler 32. The Graphic Novc 18. Amitav Ghosh Cheng Tju Lim 263 Chitra Sankaran Key Authors Part II: South East Asia 33. Eileen Chang 19. The Novel of Mainland China Xiaojue Wang 279 Jeffrey Mather 34. Timothy Mo 20. The Novel of Hong Kong Angelia Poon Mui Ch 292 Elaine Yee Lin Ho 35. F. Sionil Jose 21. The Novel of the Philippines Maria Luisa Torres R 308 Patricia May B. ]urilla 36. K. S. Maniam and '" 22. The Novel of Malaysia Eddie Tay 321 Andrew Hock Soon Ng TA BLE O F CONTENTS I vii 23. The Novel of Singapore 337 Philip Holden 24. The Novel of Myanmar 351 Pavan Kumar Malreddy 25 . Language Policy, Publishing, and Book History in South East Asia 365 Lily Rose Tope Themes and Genres 26. Writing Imperial Decline in South East Asia 383 Andrew Biswell 27. History, Memory, and Cultural Identity in the Novel of South East Asia 398 Sharmani Patricia Gabriel and Alex Tickell 28. Language in the Malaysian and Singaporean Novel in English 414 Ismail Talib 29. Life-Writing, Testimony, and Biographical Fiction 428 Alex Tickell 30. Cold War Novels: Korea and Vietnam 443 Derek C. Maus 31. Genre Fiction in South East Asia: Chick Lit and Crime Fiction 457 Kelly Yin Nga Tse 32. The Graphic Novel in South East Asia 471 Cheng Tju Lim Key Authors 33. Eileen Chang 481 Xiaojue Wang 34. Timothy Mo 495 Angelia Poon Mui Cheng 35. F. SionilJose 509 Maria Luisa Torres Reyes 36. K. S. Maniam and Tash Aw 522 Eddie Tay viii I TA BLE OF CONTENTS Part Ill: Cross-Border Fictions 37. The Novel of the Middle East 539 Anastasia Valassopoulos 38. The Indian Ocean Novel 550 Prem Poddar 39. Narrating the Global South Asian Diaspora 564 Sudesh Mishra 40. Narrating the Global South East Asian Diaspora 578 Weihsin Gui OLUMElOa V numerous iI1 41. Publishing the South and South East Asian Novel in the Global Market 595 involvement Shafquat Towheed I would like to thaJ guidance and suppor Works Cited 611 commissioning and Index of Authors 633 Boehmer for her inva General Index 645 such a volume. I am i Press for their careful One of the pleasur network of intematic detailed knowledge a been exceptionally he Antoinette Burton for grateful for the exper1 Poon, Elaine Ho, Ma! also due to Shirley i provided help and ad1 The research, edito the Novel in English ha, Open University and particular, I would lik The Open Universit) special thanks are due or inaccuracies are, of The greatest debt Oi copy-edited througho1 possible with her unfa This volume is dedi PriyaJoshi's chapte1 Temple University. Pavan Kumar Mab Forschungsgemeinsch, literary 1e time en the 13 ph and Genre Fiction in India PRIYA JOSHI T its simplest, genre fiction refers to clearly identified popular forms of the novel A with well-established conventions. Detective fiction, thrillers, horror, romances, school and adventure stories-with origins in the nineteenth century-along with Westerns, science fiction, fantasy, chick and lad lit, and offshoots such as vampire novels-which emerged in the twentieth century-provide a range of forms that com prise genre fiction today. Genre fiction's formal protocols bring some stability to an otherwise fickle marketplace where the attraction to novelty collides with a desire for predictability and the familiar. The presence of recognizable conventions in genre fiction reassures readers, writers, and publishers: all know what to expect and to provide. Booksellers and librarians, too, appreciate genre fiction's taxonomic categories for the convenience they offer in categorizing titles. The wide popularity of genre fiction and the sales that its bestsellers achieve thus provide an economic bedrock to help publishers eliminate the guesswork from unpredictable markets. What the critic Q. D. Leavis has called 'the publisher's mainstay' emerged because of readerly enthusiasms that sustain the market for genre fiction. Rather than being straitjackets, genre fiction's conventions, according to the detective novelist P. D. James, inspire an 'extraordinary variety of books and writers which this so-called formula has been able to accommodate' Games 2009, 10). Increasingly, the distinction between genre and popular fiction is hard to discern or to sustain. The persistence of conventions does not always predict the popularity of a form; likewise, being popular does not always mean that the form or novelist belongs to genre fiction. Yet, the tendency to conflate popular with genre fiction persists in many critical accounts and provides a conundrum especially evident in the case of India. In a definition provided by the scholar Tabish Khair, the two terms are used interchangeably, with the definition of 'pulp' deploying categories typically used to explain genre fiction: 'pulp fiction is fiction that uses largely fixed generic features to satisfy the largely fixed reading expectations of as large a market as possible' (Khair 2008, 61). In general, the story of genre fiction situates the Anglo American world as its locus classicus. Prevailing theories of genre fiction base their understanding on publishing and 202 I SOUTH AS IA readerly practices in Britain and the United States during the early years of the twentieth Arundhati Roy, Amitav century. Applying this history to India obscures what is unusual about Indian publishing international prizes and l and the very recent-twenty-first century, not nineteenth or twentieth century won a coveted Booker I proliferation of genre fiction in the subcontinent. Genre fiction in India includes forms unicorns, and Western : such as crime, romance, and science fiction that are familiar in the global marketplace. fiction in English was a < It also includes forms that appear largely indigenous: crick(et) lit, IIT novels (set in who largely neglected 01 the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology), and call-centre romances. With their Then, in or around Z relatively recent arrival, these forms have had to compete for consumers and their vied to discover major li1 discretionary time and income in an already well-established ecosystem that includes banker.