Contents: Preface. Our contributors. 1. Aesthetics of feminist novel: an overview/T.S. Chandra Mouli. 2. Mistressing life through mistressing art: a reading of Anita Nair's Mistress/S.C. Hajela. 3. Theme of marital dissonance in Nayantara Sahgal's The Day in Shadow/J. Samuel Kirubahar and R. Meena. 4. Contemporary women's writing from India and Indonesia: a comparison with special focus on Indonesian women's writing/Liss Marie Das. 5. "Territory as women, woman as territory and metaphors of conquest": Feminine iconography in India--a case study of some visual and verbal narratives from the Peninsula/Archana Verma. 6. Women on the margins: Manju Kapur's difficult daughters/Christopher Rollason. 7. Don't Eve-tease Akka: she is a Goddess/Alessandro Monti. 8. Diasporan divided souls and 'Identity constituting' in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake/S. Robert Gnanamony. 9. Cornelia Sorabji: an Indian early feminist/B.Y. Patil and S. Shilpa. 10. Cultural diversity and immigrant identity in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies/S. Robert Gnanamony. 11. Uncertainty to definable selfhood: a study of Nayantara Sahgal's This Time of Morning/G.A. Ghanshyam. 12. My (De) Voice: thus Shashi Deshpande speaks/P.D. Nimsarkar. 13. Labyrinth of inner Turmoil in Sonia Faleiro's The Girl/Devasree Chakraborty and G.A. Ghanshyam. 14. Shobha De's Starry nights: a study in feminism/Shivputra Shivraj Kanade. 15. Towards humanising the inhuman: a reading of Shobha De's Second Thoughts/K.S. Anish Kumar. 16. Shobha De's socialite evenings: a study in feminism/S.K. Navin. 17. Kamala Markandaya in the postcolonial space/Sudhir K. Arora. 18. Pain of Indian educated women in Shashi Deshpande's novels/Vinay K. Pandey. 19. Bhattacharya's 'Big House', Naipaul's 'Hanuman House' and Rama Mehta's Jeewan Niwas': disconcerted musique concrete/J Samuel Kriubahar and R. Meena. 20. An insight into the feminine world of Sahgal/P. Gopichand and P.N. Suseela. 21. An interview with Sunny Singh/Jaydeep Sarangi. 22. An interview with Shanta Acharya/Jaydeep Sarangi. 23. Shashi Deshpande: in conversation with T. Vijay Kumar/T. Vijay Kumar. Glossary. Index.

"Indian Women's Writings in English is a collection of research essays dealing with Indian women's writing. Each essay engages with key debates relating to the society and the status of women in India's literature and history. India has always been the undisputed land that placed women on a high pedestal and offered respect. A woman deified as 'Adi Shakti' is the centre of family role-relationship and society even in modern India. Biological differences never came in the way of enhancing eminence of women. Subsequent developments in the diachronic march of time and successive periods of subjugation culminated in the relegation of women's position in the social space in India. Indian women's writing in English is an area of enormous possibility and profit, an open and inviting ground for the scholars.

This volume presents twenty essays in addition to three interviews, which seek to re-examine the major concerns of the writers." (jacket)