Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction Varun Gulati and Mythili Anoop Section I Ch 01 Herstory: Nayantara Sahgal’s Prison and Chocolate Rachel Bari Ch 02 Producing Nation: Gender and the Idea of India Etienne Rassendren Ch 03 Where is ‘home’? A Study of Taslima Nasreen’s Homecoming and Asif Currombhoy’s The Refugee Anju Jagpal Ch 04 Scar(r)ed Women: Reading Fictional Representations of Women Afflicted by Insurgent Conflict Mukuta Borah Ch 05 Caught in the Crossfire of History: Social Reality of Post-colonial India in Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day Pramod Kumar Das and Narayan Jena Section II Ch 06 Assertion of ‘Self’: A Feminist Discourse in Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters and A Married Woman Sutapa Biswas Ch 07 Deconstructing the Stereotypes: A study of Jhuma Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth” and Ismat Chugtai’s “The Quilt” Gauri Mandapaka Ch08 The Alienated Self: Ashima in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake Shyamkiran Kaur, Rajinder K. Sen, and Poonam Pahuja Ch 09 Between Silence and Scream: A Study of Violence against Women in Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out Bhavesh Kumar and Anand Mahanand Ch 10 Negotiating with Pluralities: Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in the Writings of Shani Mootoo Neetu Devi and Ashutosh Singh Ch 11 Identity Crises in Namita Gokhle’s Paro: Dreams of Passion Shalini Vohra, Mudita Agnihotri, and Meenakshi Sain Section III Ch 12 Psychoanalytical Study of the Selective Characters of Ladies Coupe Anjali Verma, Prerna Jatav Ch 13 Mahari Then and Now: Queering Performativity in Odissi Kaustavi Sarkar Ch 14 Sarah Aboobackar’s Sahana: A Saga of Mute Body Ambika G. Mallya and Shashikantha Koudur Ch 15 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions: An Écriture Féminine Sarannya V Pillai Index About the Contributors

Contemporary Indian Women’s Writing surveys numerous English and non- English works by Indian women writers from fresh comparative perspectives, and in light of largely feminist approaches that, in some cases, also admirably challenge Western feminist habits of mind. To those unfamiliar with Indian women’s literature, this collection will serve as a helpful introduction to canonical authors, and to regions such as Orissa and Bengal that generally get short shrift in literary surveys.