Shadows of the Raj: fictions of Empire and After

You willl read, discuss and analyse fictions set in India during the colonial period, and in the decades after independence and the creation of the separate nation of Pakistan, both from an Indian and from a British perspective. These texts, which span most of the 20th century, include E.M Forster's classic Passage to India, a trailblazing examination of the burgeoning political and psychological conflict between the ruler and the ruled; Rumer Godden's Breakfast with the Nikolides, a subtle, nuanced depiction of the rise of nationalism from British and Indian points of view; Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice Candy Man, in which Partition, the strife between Hindus and Muslims, and the making of Pakistan, are seen through the eyes of a Parsi child, who belongs to neither of the majority religions; Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day, a diachronic portrait of Delhi in the 70s and the 40s, contrasting colonial and post-national regimes; and Aamer Hussein's Another Gulmohar Tree, which chronicles the marriage of an Englishwoman to a Pakistani, and life in Karachi in the aftermath of independence.