Akademi Awarded Novels in English : Millennium Responses/edited by Mithilesh K. Pandey. New Delhi, Sarup and Sons, 2003, xvi, 199 p., ISBN 81-7625-360-X.

Contents: Introduction. 1. Irresolvable bi-cultural conflicts and other ironies in Narayan’s The Guide/John Oliver Perry. 2. Cinematic adaptation of R.K. Narayan’s The Guide: a perspective/Ranganath Nandyal. 3. The Guide: still a guide to all/Tapan Kumar Ghosh. 4. Patterns of dominance: R.K. Narayan’s The Guide/Ravi Nandan Sinha. 5. The motif of interpretation and over interpretation in R.K. Narayan’s The Guide/P. Radhika. 6. Raja Rao’s The Serpent and the Rope: a synthesis of culture and philosophy/Mithilesh K. Pandey. 7. The Guide and The Serpent and the Rope: two Indian ways towards a discovery of the self/Michel Pousse. 8. Morning Face: a quest for new humanism in Anand/Awadh Kishore Pandey. 9. Compromise is the key: synthesis in Shadow from Ladakh/Pashupati Jha and Nagendra Kumar. 10. The theme of cultural integration in Shadow from Ladakh/Narendra Pratap Singh. 11. Chaman Nahal’s Azadi: history as metaphor/Mukesh Ranjan Verma. 12. Historiographic metafiction and Chaman Nahal’s Azadi: an appraisal/A.H. Tak. 13. Existential despair in The Last Labyrinth/Basavaraj Naikar. 14. Orchestra of discontent: Som’s quest in The Last Labyrinth/Rajeshwar Mittapalli and B. Brahmananda Chary. 15. Indian ethos in Arun Joshi’s The Last Labyrinth/M. Mani Meitei. 16. The reader and the point of view: the narrative technique of The Golden Gate/Sahana Das. 17. The narrative of displacement: a reading of Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines/Chandrani Biswas. 18. The Trotter Nama: I. Allan Sealy’s "I-witness"- hi/story of his Anglo-Indian community/Avadhesh Kumar Singh. Index.

"Indian Novel in English is a significant component of commonwealth literature with writers like Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao among others winning international acclaim as men of letters. The premier institution of India, the National Academy of Letters, i.e. Sahitya Akademi has acknowledged the excellence of several works of fiction over the years. Rooted in the native ethos, these novels manifest the cultural plurality of our polity in the fascinating mozaic of marga and desi traditions. This volume, comprising eighteen perceptive essays, focuses on the nine Akademi awarded novels by male writers to underline their thematic and artistic virtuosity.

"Divided in two sections, the essays provide insightful critiques of post-independence Indian classics like The Guide, The Serpent and the Rope, Shadow from Ladakh, Morning Face, Azadi, The Last Labyrinth, The Golden Gate, The Shadow Lines, and The Trotter-Nama. The contributors include senior scholars of English with proven expertise in the Indian English fiction. The volume opens up fresh vistas of critical enquiry and interpretation in respect of contemporary Indian fiction in English." (jacket)

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