What are young Indians reading and watching now? Are we in a new, contemporary moment — one that is no longer postcolonial?
Reading India Now is a study of contemporary Indian literature, film and popular culture, arguing that although today’s public sphere looks very different from earlier periods, we are not simply witnessing the commercialization of literature and a deterioration of literary quality. Rather, new cultural forms are responding to the uncertainty of the global present.
Table of Contents
Introduction: In Search of an Indian Contemporary
Part I Locations
Chapter 1 The New Provincialism
Chapter 2 Writing the City Now
Part II Publics
Chapter 3 In Pursuit of the Common Man
Chapter 4 Melodrama and the Open Edge of Politics
Part III Representations
Chapter 5 Literature Beyond the Pale
Chapter 6: Inside and Out
Afterword: Contemporaneity’s Futures