Bloomsbury Literary Studies

KARVAN: travelling the world through literature and poetry

New Guest post from author E. Dawson Varughese!

The author of Bloomsbury’s Reading New India doesn’t simply keep her world literature interests between the covers of her books. E. Dawson Varughese takes her literary arts installation the KARVAN to literary festivals, schools and libraries so that people can travel the world through poetry and fiction.

In July, the KARVAN went to the Poetry International Festival at the Southbank Centre in London. During the three days that the KARVAN was installed on the riverside, people travelled to Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Iran, Malaysia and visited mountains, forests, took city breaks and relaxed by the sea.

The KARVAN draws upon Emma’s love of travel and time spent living abroad as well as her PhD in World Englishes literature. From the outset, Emma wanted the KARVAN to be participatory in nature and to get people reading outside of their usual fiction or poetry worlds. Often, we’re keen to read something different but we don’t know where to start and just as we might browse the internet for blogs, travel advice or pick up a brochure in a travel agent’s, the KARVAN acts as a space for advice and inspiration.

During the Poetry International Festival, a visitor asked Emma about her own favourite literary travel destination. A simple question to answer, surely? but she hesitated.  In India often and when not in India, she is usually reading India; it seemed obvious that her answer to the question should be ‘India’. Emma’s Bloomsbury publication, Reading New India launched its India edition in February this year with a series of university lectures and a book signing at Bahri & Sons, New Delhi. The book charts the various types of fiction which have exploded in the Indian markets since the turn of the millennium. From Chick Lit to what she calls Crick Lit, Indian graphic novels and ‘young India’ narratives, Reading New India is a journey in itself. But given that she reads, writes, breathes Indian fiction in English, India isn’t necessarily her chosen literary destination, instead she enjoys wandering the streets of Cairo with Mahfouz or Al Aswany, hanging out with the Chinese communities of Kingston Jamaica with Kerry Young or hopping into a dystopian South Africa with Lauren Beukes.

Literature has always had the power to take its readers to other worlds, people and cultures and Emma believes that World Literature is especially powerful in offering its readers new social, cultural and geographical encounters. The KARVAN literally takes itself to people to offer them this kind of journey. A 16ft caravan, renovated both inside and out, the KARVAN takes its name from the Persian: kārvān. Traditionally, this would be a group of people travelling together, experiencing the open road together, encountering the new, and often challenging together. The kārvān would embrace the changing landscape, unknown people and their trades, it would taste different foods, learn new skills and acquire languages from other cultures. In an echo of this ancient journey and related discovery, Emma’s KARVAN only asks that you have a desire to travel off the beaten track and to follow a compass which never settles for long in a single direction.

Welcome to the KARVAN: ‘together we travel’

www.worldlits.com

Check Out Emma’s Book, Reading New India: Post-Millennial Indian Fiction in English

 

Reading New India in the Pink City: Jaipur Literature Festival 2013

Emma Dawson Varughese, author of Reading New India: Post Millennial Indian Fiction in English talks about her new book and its recent launch at the inspiring Jaipur Literature Festival 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you enter Diggi Palace, your eyes are awash with pink – pink banners, pink lanterns and swathes of pink cloth moving haplessly in the January breeze of the pink city, Jaipur. It’s not only the ‘pinkness’ of the Jaipur Literature Festival which proves mesmerising, the footfall at the biggest literature festival in Asia is also captivating, with various tents, rooms, stalls and bookshops, the Jaipur Literature Festival is certainly something to experience, especially if it involves your book launch...

Reading New India: Post-Millennial Indian fiction in English was inaugurated at the literary festival at Diggi Palace to a Saturday afternoon audience. As a slice of ‘New India’ itself sat under the canopy of the ‘TATA Steel Front Lawns’, Namita Gokhale co-director of the festival presented a copy of Reading New India to the public, underscoring its importance in the contemporary literary scene of India.

The idea for Reading New India came as I flew out of Mumbai in stormy monsoon clouds in 2009. I had, once again been hit by the staggering development and construction each time I left the airport, be that in Mumbai, Bangalore, Cochin or Delhi. In tandem, the literary production of Indian fiction in English was equally staggering and I knew then, that this body of new writing deserved academic attention. Academics from both the UK and India have echoed this need, Prof Malashri Lal of the University of Delhi endorsing the publication, saying that: "it’s the first book to focus on fiction at the millennium, the crossroad for India’s globalization". There has been particular interest from universities in Hyderabad, Bangalore and from Rajasthan looking for a text to complement literary courses and postgraduate interests in contemporary Indian fiction.

Prof John Thieme of the University of East Anglia writes about Reading New India:

"A compelling introduction to the multitude of fresh voices to be found in the pages of twenty-first century Indian fiction. Putting its main emphasis on novels published within India itself, many of them unknown outside the country, it invites its readers to fasten their seatbelts for a journey into a land of call centres, reality shows, ‘‘Metro Reads’’, MTV and variant sexual behaviour."

Much of Reading New India is about young and aspirational, urban India, the narratives explored in the book suggest that postcolonial narratives belong to an erstwhile India and that post-millennial fiction in English from India captures and critiques a post-liberalised India of the noughties and beyond. Chick Lit, new waves of historical fiction, Crick Lit (my term) and the graphic novel are all manifest of this post-millennial literary feast and as the publishing scene in India keeps growing, offering affordable paperback books of these various and engaging narratives of life in 21^st century India, reading and understanding new India becomes ever more necessary. Indeed, evidence of  ‘new India’ is all around, malls in the metros push up, flyovers re-sculpt the urban landscape, cranes hang on the skyline, and as 2013 sees Jaipur’s autorickshaws fitted with inbuilt satnavs, one thing is for sure - more people will certainly make it to Diggi Palace in 2014.

E. Dawson Varughese is an independent scholar in literary and cultural studies. She is an experienced field researcher of world literature in English and is the author of Beyond The Postcolonial: World Englishes Literature (2012). See her work at: www.beyondthepostcolonial.com

Reading New India: Post-Millennial Indian fiction in English is out now, RRP £19.99, available for just £17.99 from www.bloomsbury.com