Fictionalising Myth and History offers refreshingly new perspectives on four postcolonial novels by writers hailing from different countries: Witi Ihimaera of New Zealand, Ngugi wa Thiong'o of Kenya, Shashi Tharoor of India and Salman Rushdie, the India-born writer living in the UK. It reveals how the boundaries of fiction, myth and history get blurred when forces of imperialism and resistance play out their power struggles in different countries. Political and culture myths are being constantly reshaped in a dynamic historical process, underlying which is the truth that political myths that shape history are crafted by the word of command. The novels explored here being metafictional texts, Sundararaghavan uses multiple theories in her analysis. This includes the ideas of Ernst Cassirer, Roland Barthes, Levi Strauss, Hayden White, and Greg Grandin among others. The book ends with a discussion of the future of postcolonial studies in a century when old colonies have shed their colonial bondage. Sundararaghavan examines the evidence of historians to show the need for new directions in post colonial studies in the light of the emergence of financial colonisation and other hegemonic structures. The book closes with an appendix that summarises how the myth of the Aryan invasion of India has shaped the teaching and writing of history in India.
About the Author
Padma Malini Sundararaghavan taught for several years at Stella Maris College, Chennai, India, and has done research on postcolonial fiction, obtaining her doctoral degree from the University of Madras. She has written articles on Indian literature for the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Postcolonial Literatures in English and also co-authored a travel and heritage book titled It Happened Along the Kaveri.
