Bookmarked Musings: Arundhati Roy’s The God of small Things- Life after Death By Ramlal Agarwal

In this literary essay, Ramlal Agarwal talks about Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things which express in a language that is peculiar to the author, an idiom that conveys the rhythm and feel of Kerala and Keralite culture

The period of last three decades of the 20th C has been a period of literary exuberance in Indian English literature. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, sprawling across several narrative modes, three generations and two countries met with extraordinary success. The American and the British publishers saw great possibilities in bringing out Indian writers. They offered huge advances to them. There was speculation that Manil Suri, the author of The Death of Vishnu had finalized a deal for a staggering five-million-dollar advance. The West was enamored of new literature coming out of the East. The Western media was impressed by the variety of Indian English – its turn of phrase, sensitivity, its culture, and Indian English writers were extolled sky-high and walked away with prestigious awards and prizes. All this filled the Indian English writers with extravagant confidence and they crossed all limits of humility and modesty. Rushdie, in his introduction to Vintage Book of Indian Winting-1947-(99) proclaimed, “The prose writing- both fiction and non-fiction created in this period by Indian writers working in English, is proving to be stronger and more important body of work than most of what has been produced in the 16 official languages of India and that this new and still burgeoning  “Indo – Anglian” literature represents perhaps the most valuable contribution India has yet made to the world of books.”