Postcolonial Fiction and the Question of Influence: Arundhati Roy, <i>The God of Small Things</i> and Rumer Godden

This article reflects on formal and technical similarities in the writing of Arundhati Roy and Rumer Godden through a close parallel examination of three works by Godden: Black Narcissus (1939), The River (1946), and The Peacock Spring (1975) and Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997). I use the possibility of an unrecognized dialogue between Godden’s and Roy’s fictions to tackle the broader issue of “influence” as a critical-conceptual elephant in the room of postcolonial literary studies: something that can only be spoken of in certain ways, using a certain vocabulary. I ask why certain critical assumptions—amongst them the politics of “writing back,” a kind of ironic formal auto-critique and a tendency to avoid “vertical” comparison between earlier and later texts in the post/colony except as a resistant form of reiterative citation—have made the question of “influence” a peculiarly difficult one to pose (and to answer) in postcolonial literary contexts

Amitav Ghosh in interview with Neluka Silva and Alex Tickell

Neluka Silva: Amitav Ghosh, you are a novelist and you also write journalistic pieces on travel. in what ways are your travel writing and fiction linked? Am1tav Ghosh: It\u27s hard to say. I don\u27t think of my journalistic writing as \u27travel wnhng\u27 as such; for me, travelling is always in some way connected with my fictional work. It\u27s a very close link, I would say

Anticipatory anti-colonial writing in R.K. Narayan's Swami and Friends and Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable

This article uses the term “anticipatory anti-colonial writing” to discuss the workings of time in R.K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends and Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable. Both these first novels were published in 1935 with the support of British literary personalities (Graham Greene and E.M. Forster respectively) and both feature young protagonists who, in contrasting ways, are engaged in Indian resistance to colonial rule. This study examines the difference between Narayan’s local, though ironical, resistance to the homogenizing temporal demands of empire and Anand’s awkwardly modernist, socially committed vision. I argue that a form of anticipation that explicitly looks forward to decolonization via new and transnational literary forms is a crucial feature of Untouchable that is not found in Swami and Friends, despite the latter’s anti-colonial elements. Untouchable was intended to be a “bridge between the Ganges and the Thames” and anticipates postcolonial negotiations of time that critique global inequalities and rely upon the multidirectional global connections forged by modernism

Data Management in Multicountry Consortium Studies: The Enterics For Global Health (EFGH) Shigella Surveillance Study Example

Background: Rigorous data management systems and planning are essential to successful research projects, especially for large, multicountry consortium studies involving partnerships across multiple institutions. Here we describe the development and implementation of data management systems and procedures for the Enterics For Global Health (EFGH) Shigella surveillance study—a 7-country diarrhea surveillance study that will conduct facility-based surveillance concurrent with population-based enumeration and a health care utilization survey to estimate the incidence of Shigella­-associated diarrhea in children 6 to 35 months old. Methods: The goals of EFGH data management are to utilize the knowledge and experience of consortium members to collect high-quality data and ensure equity in access and decision-making. During the planning phase before study initiation, a working group of representatives from each EFGH country site, the coordination team, and other partners met regularly to develop the data management systems for the study. Results: This resulted in the Data Management Plan, which included selecting REDCap and SurveyCTO as the primary database systems. Consequently, we laid out procedures for data processing and storage, study monitoring and reporting, data quality control and assurance activities, and data access. The data management system and associated real-time visualizations allow for rapid data cleaning activities and progress monitoring and will enable quicker time to analysis. Conclusions: Experiences from this study will contribute toward enriching the sparse landscape of data management methods publications and serve as a case study for future studies seeking to collect and manage data consistently and rigorously while maintaining equitable access to and control of data

Review Essay: 'Elementary My Dear Hameed': Postcolonial Crime Fiction; Nels Pearson and Marc Singer, ed <i>Detective Fiction in a Postcolonial and Transnational World</i>; Ibne Safi <i>The Laughing Corpse</i>; Ibne Safi <i>Dr Dread</i>; M C Dutton <i>The Singhing Detective</i>

This review essay covers criticism and fiction, all relating to postcolonial crime genres. It evaluates 'Detective Fiction in the Postcolonial and Transnational World' by Nels Pearson and Marc Singer, and reviews the republished work of the Urdu crime author Ibne Safi ('The Laughing Corpse' and 'Dr Dread'). It also covers a more recent crime fiction by M.C. Dutton - 'The Singhing Detective'

"How many Pakistans?" questions of space and identity in the writing of partition

This article examines the intersections and troubling disconnections between territorial space and political, cultural and communal identity in Indian and Pakistani Partition fictions. Concentrating particularly on the Urdu short-stories Sadat Hasan Manto (in English translation), it uses studies of 'border-lifecycles' to reflect on the real and imagined geographies of the Indo-Pakistani border after 1947

Footprints on the Beach: Traces of Colonial Adventure in Narratives of Independent Tourism

This article analyses the imperial imaginary intrinsic to forms of 'independent' tourism and reads Alex Garland's cult novel of independent travel 'The Beach' as an expression of contemporary cultural encounter. Drawing on theories of tourism, my analysis tried to show how 'independent' tourism, although narrated as a more culturally sensitive form of encounter than conventional tourism, often 'Others' host populations in characteristically postcolonial ways

Scholarship-terrorists: the India House Hostel and the 'student problem' in Edwardian London

This book-chapter examines the nationalist politics of and British counter-terrorist measures taken against India House - a notorious Indian student hostel managed by Shyamji Krishnavarma and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in the London suburb of Highate between 1905 and 1910. My analysis reviews the politics of the Indian House group and explores the policy-recommendations of the Lee Warner committee, founded to counteract the increasing political radicalism of Indian students in Britain. The chapter concludes with a short analysis of Sarath Kumar Ghosh's contemporary novel 'The Prince of Destiny'