This anthology brings together the poems and short stories prescribed in the paper on Twentieth-Century Literature of the First Year BA English (Honours) course of the University of Delhi. These include works by both Indian writers writing originally in English and those writing in a variety of Indian languages but to be read here in English translation. The anthology is thus an attempt to reflect and disseminate recent developments that have decolonized literary studies. Students of English Literature will be introduced to several texts that are representative of the rich literary traditions of India. Besides enabling a study of Indian Literature from a comparative perspective, the anthology will also sensitize students to issues such as the constitution of Indian literature as a field of study and the challenges posed by translation.
The editorial material, in the form of headnotes, annotations, and suggested reading, provides useful aids for understanding and situating these texts as well as points of departure for further study.
As English has become more and more a global language, it has more and more become a vehicle for World Literature. Numerous writers from diverse and disparate regions from all over the world have adopted it as their preferred medium of creative expression, and other (surely still more numerous) writers who continue to create in a language other than English are becoming widely avail- able in English translation.
The neo-colonization effected through a global use of English has thus served, in a happy paradox, also to bring about a decolonization of literary studies in a country like ours. English Literature, i.c. literature written in English by English/British authors, the systematic study of which was introduced and promoted in India for well over a hundred years under colonial aegis (and which as our 'master' literature catalyzed the growth of modern literature in nearly all the major Indian languages), is now seen to be just one national literature among many, no more distinguished or valuable necessarily than the literatures of many other countries of the world which have had a comparably long and rich literary tradition.
In order to recognize, reflect and indeed disseminate these developments, the new syllabus for the BA (Honours) course in English of the University of Delhi now includes (besides several papers in literature and literary theory from various parts of the world), an entire compulsory paper in Indian Literature to be studied in the Ist Year. This anthology brings together six short stories and selections from the five poets prescribed in Units 4 and 5 of this paper. These include the works of both Indian writers writing originally in English and those writing in a variety of Indian languages-Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu-but to be read here in English translation. (This paper includes, besides this anthology, a novel from Bengali in English translation, Home and the World (Ghare Baire) by Rabindranath Tagore; another novel written originally in English, The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh; and two plays in English translation from Hindi and Marathi respectively, Halfway House (Adhe Adhure) by Mohan Rakesh, and Ghashiram Kotwal by Vijay Tendulkar.
It gives me great pleasure to thank all our 600-odd colleagues in the various colleges of the University of Delhi who facilitated the adoption of the new syllabus and some of whom then came forward to assist in the editing of this anthology. The work of each of the eleven writers in this anthology was edited by a colleague with expertise in the area, including familiarity with the original literary tradition in the case of translated texts, and their contributions were co-ordinated by a committee comprising some members of the Department of English, University of Delhi. All these colleagues are named on the next page and to them in particular I extend my warmest gratitude.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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