Re Presenting India A Study of Booker Prize Winning Novels on India

Abstract

The Man Booker Prize is one of the most popular literary prizes in the English-speaking world. However, the last three Booker Prize winners from India, Arundhati Roy (1997),Kiran Desai (2006) and Aravind Adiga (2008) have met with considerable antagonism in India. These writers have come under criticism for offering images of India that are newlinepackaged for easy consumption in the West. They are accused of re-orientalizing India for an international audience. A study on Booker Prize-winning novels on India is relevant in this context. The focus of the thesis is on the re-presentation of colonial and postcolonial India in Booker Prize-winning novels. The works that form part of the study are J.G.Farrell s The Siege of Krishnapur, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala s Heat and Dust,Paul Scott s Staying on, Salman newlineRushdie s Midnight s Children,Arundhati Roy s The God of Small Things, Kiran Desai s The Inheritance of Loss and Aravind Adiga s The White Tiger.This study, while analyzing the textual representation of India in the novels, looks at how these Booker Prize-winning newlinewriters have strategically dealt with the problem of Orientalism. Chapter One of the study introduces the Booker Prize and its Indian connection.Chapter Two of this study looks into Orientalism in the Indian context, along with critiques and commentaries on it. The chapter briefly studies the evolution of Oriental studies in India. The following chapters of the study then analyze three modes of representation that strategically revise Orientalism in literature by inverting, repeating and playing upon the different significations attributed to the Orient. The three modes are Post-Orientalism, New Orientalism and Re-Orientalism.Post-Orientalism is concerned with texts by Western writers that are counterhegemonic in nature. J.G.Farrell s The Siege of Krishnapur, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala s Heat and Dust and Paul Scott s Staying On are analyzed in Chapter Three of this study as examples of Post-Orientalism. Their representations display an awareness of the constructed....