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But he was lying there beside her, waiting for her answer. A stranger. They were strangers. She turned slowly away from him, towards the window. And against the bright blue sky, she saw the storks flying away in formation, an arrow in the sky. They’d started their long journey at last, back to their other home. They’d dared to dream again. And roam the skies for something they’d loved and lost, perhaps. ‘Perhaps,’ she said turning back. In poetic vignettes set against the fascinating exotics of Australia and France, Chandani Lokugé weaves a haunting and meditative story on the spectral gains and losses of travel, the nature of its transience. Through it, she dignifies with grace and tenderness, our unassuageable yearning, when we have lost everything and even ourselves, to anchor to something, someone, somewhere, and the unexpected moment of our arrival. ‘A haunting mystical reading experience, suffused with history, art, and recovery from trauma. An inspired travelogue … the damaged genius of Van Gogh brooding over the narrative, with hints of both joy and anguish.’ Chris Ringrose
I go down to the river, unheeding my mother’s disapproval. I dip into the lazily flowing water. Here, at least, nothing has changed.The bath-cloth balloons around my body and I press it down. I loosen my hair and let it spread where it will. I open my hands upwards on the water’s surface, languidly remembering. All, that is familiar. The promise. The promise of life. As a young woman in Sri Lanka, Manthri marvels at the promise of life and yearns for a future of fulfilled dreams. Years on, she finds herself in a loveless marriage, in a foreign land, and estranged from her two Australian children. Torn between an idyllic past to which she cannot return and a present that breaks her heart, she never loses touch with those dreams, nor abandons her passionate enchantment with life.
The chapters presented in this Reader, drawing on recent works, explore and analyse dynamic subject matter such as family, moral values, cultural hybridity, Asian-Australian dialogues, gender and racial stereotypes, the representations of Australianness, Indigenous Australia, imagery and motifs, the variety of Australian national symbols, mythology, traditions, representation or development of outback or suburban and metropolitan spaces in Australian cinema and culture. For a better understanding of the breadth and depth of Australia and its culture, the papers selected in this book also examine the exhibition of the Australian artist's aesthetic experimentation in the various faces of the A...
But he was lying there beside her, waiting for her answer. A stranger. They were strangers. She turned slowly away from him, towards the window. And against the bright blue sky, she saw the storks flying away in formation, an arrow in the sky. They’d started their long journey at last, back to their other home. They’d dared to dream again. And roam the skies for something they’d loved and lost, perhaps. ‘Perhaps,’ she said turning back. In poetic vignettes set against the fascinating exotics of Australia and France, Chandani Lokugé weaves a haunting and meditative story on the spectral gains and losses of travel, the nature of its transience. Through it, she dignifies with grace and tenderness, our unassuageable yearning, when we have lost everything and even ourselves, to anchor to something, someone, somewhere, and the unexpected moment of our arrival. ‘A haunting mystical reading experience, suffused with history, art, and recovery from trauma. An inspired travelogue … the damaged genius of Van Gogh brooding over the narrative, with hints of both joy and anguish.’ Chris Ringrose
South Asian Diasporic Writing—poetry, fiction literary theory, and drama by writers from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka now living in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA—is one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary world literature. In this volume, twelve acclaimed writers from this tradition are interviewed by experts in the field about their political, thematic, and personal concerns as well as their working methods and the publishing scene. The book also includes an authoritative introduction to the field, and essays on each writer and interviewer. The interviewers and interviewees are: Alexandra Watkins, Michelle de Kretser, Homi Bhabha, Klaus Stierstorfer, Amit Chaudhuri, Pavan Malreddy, Rukhsana Ahmad, Maryam Mirza, Shankari Chandran, Birte Heidemann, Neel Mukherjee, Anjali Joseph, Chris Ringrose, Michelle Cahill, Rajith Savanadasa, Mariam Pirbhai, Maryam Mirza, Mridula Koshy, Sehba Sarwar, Dr Angela Savage, Sulari Gentill.
Dr. Aruna Sitesh (1945-2007) taught English Literature for thirty years and was the Principal of Indraprastha College, Delhi University, for a decade until the last day of her life. A Fulbright Fellow (1991-92) at the University of Chicago and visiting scholar (1993) at Rockefeller Study Centre, Bellagio, Italy, she co-edited Pratibha India for about 24 years. While most of her creative writing, comprising six short story collections, was in Hindi she published another six volumes of critical studies, edited works, etc. in English. Her short story Teesari Dharati figures in the anthology of immortal Hindi short stories by women writers, currently under publication by Sahitya Akademi. The hon...
Moving away from orthodox narratives of the Raj and British presence in India, this book examines the significance of the networks and connections that South Asians established on British soil. Looking at the period 1858-1950, it presents readings of cultural history and points to the urgent need to open up the parameters of this field of study.
This edited volume is the first to focus on how concepts of citizenship diversify and stimulate the long-standing field of law and literature, and vice versa. Building on existing research in law and literature as well as literature and citizenship studies, the collection approaches the triangular relationship between citizenship, law and literature from a variety of disciplinary, conceptual and political perspectives, with particular emphasis on the performative aspect inherent in any type of social expression and cultural artefact. The sixteen chapters in this volume present literature as carrying multifarious, at times opposing energies and impulses in relation to citizenship. These range from providing discursive arenas for consolidating, challenging and re-negotiating citizenship to directly interfering with or inspiring processes of law-making and governance. The volume opens up new possibilities for the scholarly understanding of citizenship along two axes: Citizenship-as-Literature: Enacting Citizenship and Citizenship-in-Literature: Conceptualising Citizenship.
Examining the emerging figure of the woman doctor and her relationship to empire in Victorian culture, Narin Hassan traces both amateur and professional 'doctoring' by British women travelers in colonial India and the Middle East. Hassan sets the scene by offering examples from Victorian novels that reveal the rise of the woman doctor as a fictional trope. Similarly, medical advice manuals by Victorian doctors aimed at families traveling overseas emphasized how women should maintain and manage healthy bodies in colonial locales. For Lucie Duff Gordon, Isabel Burton, Anna Leonowens, among others, doctoring natives secured them access to their private lives and cultural traditions. Medical tex...
The Ethics of Survival in Contemporary Literature and Culture delves into the complex problems involved in all attempts to survive. The essays analyze survival in contemporary prose narratives, short stories, poems, dramas, and theoretical texts, but also in films and other modes of cultural practices. Addressing diverse topics such as memory and forgetting in Holocaust narratives, stories of refugees and asylum seekers, and representations of war, the ethical implications involved in survival in texts and media are brought into a transnational critical discussion. The volume will be of potential interest to a wide range of critics working on ethical issues, the body, and the politics of art and literature.