Contents: Preface. 1. Preamble. 2. The literary landscape. 3. The making of a nation. 4. East-west encounter. 5. Renunciation as an ideal. 6. Myth as technique. 7. The problem of style. 9. The prospect. Note on Indian novels in English translation. Select bibliography. Index.

"First published in 1971, this study of the Indian novel in English has remained a seminal book for the last three decades. This was the earliest work to apply rigorous standards of critical analysis to this new field of study and to situate the novels studied in their historical and social context. Written in an elegant and jargon-free language The Twice Born Fiction laid the foundations for future discourse in this field and anticipated some of the issues relating to nation, gender, power and identity that postcolonial theory was to take up subsequently. It is being reissued in the belief that the present-day reader would be interested in re-examining the paradigms that this book set up." (jacket)