Modernist Transitions

Modernist Transitions: Cultural Encounters between British and Bangla Modernist Fiction from 1910s to 1950s is a much-awaited book. Bangla has always been known to reflect and even resist Western literary influences through phases of its rich literary tradition. Hence a book that studies one of the major movements in Western literature—that of modernism— and compares both English and Bangla texts with reference to modernist issues and tropes is definitely worth the wait. An area of research that several scholars would have pondered over has finally been given shape by Subhadeep Ray and Goutam Karmakar in this book. A must-read for scholars and students interested in research in both English and Bangla and its comparative studies. -- Professor (Dr) Nandini Saha, Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India This innovative collection sheds new light on important questions across a number of disciplinary fields including history, postcolonial and literary studies. It raises new perspectives on modernism, imperialism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. -- Dr Esme Cleall, Senior Lecturer on the History of British Empire, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK The histories of Bangla and Britain have long been intertwined—both are key sites in the experience of modernity, industrialisation, empire and its postcolonial consequences. Both, as a consequence, produced in the 20th-century, rich literature that documented and imagined that experience. But there is also an asymmetry—for while English literature is well studied in Bangla, Bangla literature is not studied in Britain to the same extent. This collection of critical essays offers the opportunity to correct this asymmetry, and to consider the literatures of modernity across these two sites not just in comparison, but in complement to one another, opening discussions about nation and narration, intersections between autobiography and fiction, realism, literature and the domestic, and transitions away from colonial and postcolonial tropes. This volume will open up a new world of writing to many readers, and to others, set what they know in a new, and global, perspective. -- Professor Edward Hollis, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK