Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 10:03:24 -0800
Subject: My new book on South Asian fiction now published


According to Greenwood Press, they are now shipping copies of my 
book, _Modern South Asian Literature in English_, containing essays 
on Attia Hosain, Jhumpa Lahiri, Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, 
R. K. Narayan, Michael Ondaatje, Raja Rao, Arundhati Roy, Salman 
Rushdie, Shyam Selvadurai, Khushwant Singh, Bapsi Sidhwa, Manil Suri, 
and Rabindranath Tagore. ISBN: 031332011X. List price $49.95, but 
available from Barnes & Noble online for $39.96. 296 pages, hardcover.

Those interested in publishing reviews of the book can send inquiries 
to Alex Petri at   apetri-AT-greenwood.com (I don't know how many review 
copies they'll be sending out, but it's worth asking if you can 
guarantee a published review).

This is part of a series aimed at readers beginning to explore world 
literature: high school and beginning college students, plus members 
of reading groups, etc. I was specifically asked not to include 
scholarly apparatus and to eschew theoretical and technical jargon. 
The bibliographies supplied are not meant to document the chapters, 
but to provide sources for further exploration. There is a detailed 
glossary of words and phrases in the back of the book which covers 
the featured fiction. Works focused on were chosen for their 
approachability. Thus although _Midnight's Children_ and his other 
novels are briefly discussed, the focus of the Rushdie chapter is on 
_East, West_.

Although the original market was supposed to be libraries, I think it 
could also serve as a core text for beginning courses on South Asian 
Anglophone fiction.

I tried to get Greenwood to change the title to "Modern South Asian 
Fiction in English" since it doesn't cover poetry or drama, but they 
insisted on sticking with "literature" to keep the title uniform with 
others in their series "Literature as Windows to World Cultures." A 
minor point, but I don't want you to think I'm unaware of the 
inconsistency. Note that in my introduction I issue some warnings 
about the use of fiction as a "window" on a culture; I'm not buying 
in to all the implications of the series title.

I hope you find it useful.



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