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Indian Pulp Fiction in English: A Preliminary Overview from Dutt to Dé

2008; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 43; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0021989408095238

1741-6442

Tabish Khair,

Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

This article provides an overview of the long history of Indian pulp fiction in English, offering a tentative definition of the genre by identifying both qualitative and quantitative markers. Beginning with nineteenth-century romances, such as Toru Dutt's Bianca, K. K. Lahiri's Roshinara and K. Chakravarti's Sarata and Hingana, it moves forward to a consideration of twentieth-century pulp forms, including detective fiction, science fiction and fantasy fiction. It includes a more detailed account of the rise of Shoba Dé, discussing her work in relation to the phenomenon of Indian film and gossip magazines like Stardust, and of the fiction of Sujata Massey, “the creator of the Rei Shimura mysteries”. It argues that while Dé's work expresses the half-realized social and cultural issues of urban and metropolitan India, Massey's fiction is self-consciously topical within a cosmopolitan scenario.