Description
The scholarly essays in this book open up experimental and novel spaces and genres beyond the traditional and the literary world of Indian Popular Fiction as it existed towards the end of the last millennium. They respond to the possibilities opened up by the technology-driven and internet-savvy reading and writing world of today. Contemporaneous and bold, most of the essays resonate with the racy and fast-paced milieu and social media space inhabited by today's youth. Combative in its drift, this book makes possible an attempt to disband hierarchies and dismantle categories that have engulfed the expansive landscape of Indian Popular Fiction for too long. It facilitates discussion on graphic novels, microfiction, popular-entertainment and political satire on television and celluloid, social media-driven romances existing in the domain of the 'real' rather than that of 'fantasy' and mythological readings against the backdrop of gender and politics. Aimed at facilitating further research by scholars and enthusiasts of Indian Popular Fiction, this book is also an ode to the current trends generated by social and internet media cosmos.
This book is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Dismantling Hierarchies
1. ‘Popular’ and ‘Classic’: Deconstructing the Categories
Ruchi Nagpal
2. Literary Fiction as Popular Fiction: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies
Deblina Rout
3. Betwixt and Between: Giving the Middle Its Due
Ojasvi Kala
Part 2: Romancing the Celluloid
4. Bhojpuri Leisure: Popularity, Profanity and Piracy
Gautam Choubey
5. Feluda’s Serialised and Celluloid Selves: A Tale of Literariness and Patrilineal Legacies
Arunabha Bose
6. The Popular ‘ Dexter’: Its Heirs and Impact on Indian Media
Neha Singh
Part 3: (Discoursing) Politics of the Popular
7. Graphic Novels and Delhi: Contested Spaces in the Popular
Sangeeta Mittal
8. Political Exceptions and the Imperatives of Popular Dissent: A Reading of I.S. Jauhar’s 1978 Emergency
Spoof Nasbandi
Anupama Jaidev Karir
9. Woman and Statecraft: Reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s Novels in the Series ‘Girls of the Mahabharata’
Indrani Das Gupta and Shashi Prava Tigga
Part 4: Moving Beyond: Social Media and New Spaces
10. Interrogating Social Media and Romance: The Case of Durjoy Datta
Aisha Qadry
11. India’s Tryst with Flash Fiction: A Terribly Tiny Tale
Rachit Raj and Pranjali Gupta
12. Online Writer and the New Age Popular
Prachi Sharma
