The Word is India

From every corner of the worldLondon, New York, the Cambodian hinterland or rural Egyptthey have launched their works, capturing the attention of a mesmerized world. A few decades ago, their predecessorsR.K. Narayan, G.V. Desani and Anita Desaialso produced great literary works, unfortunately doomed to dwell in the silent and isolated world at home. Abroad, they became mere exotic items punctuating the catalogs of quality foreign publishers. The revival began in the 1980s, when Salman Rushdie rocked world literature with his Midnight's Children. Following him, a great array of new writers and their works, have come to light and shot to fame. Among them are Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Amit Chauduri, Hanif Kureishi, Ardashir Vakil, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy and Shauna Singh Baldwin. Born to Indian or Pakistani middle-class families, they are educated and speak English as fluently as they do their mother tongue. In most cases, their English is even more fluent than their native language. These are the writers of post-colonial Indian literature, who have managed to secure respectable places in the arena of world literature. Assisted by the attentions of British and American publishers, their diaspora literature has developed a voice, and speaks to the world. The following article dissects this phenomenon. TEMPO reporter Dewi Anggraini interviewed two of them, Amitav Ghosh and Hanif Kureishi, at a literary festival in Hong Kong recently.