Desert in bloom : contemporary Indian women's fiction in english / edited by Meenakshi Bharat

Includes bibliography and index

Introduction PART I: Critical readings: What others have to say Radical self-fashioning: language, culture and identity in Anita Desai's novels -- Radha Chakravarty Men in the minds of women: women writers and male narrators in the fiction of Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai and Gita Hariharan -- Jasbir Jain 'If I cast no shadow, I do not exist.' the relationship between existentialism, materialism and feminism in the novels of Shashi Deshpande -- Anne Collette The heroine's progress: Feminism and the family in the fiction of Shashi Deshpande, Githa Hariharan and Manjula Padmanabhan -- Rajeswari Sunder Rajan An exile/at home: the urban middle class in Shashi Deshpande -- Anjana Sharma First encounter: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala -- Yasmine Gooneratne When women laugh: humour in Namita Gokhale, Suniti Namjoshi and Arundhati Roy -- Meeta Chatterjee Women, history and fiction: Kapur's Difficult daughters and Baldwin's What the Body remembers -- Vibha S. Chauhan Gender and beyond: The child in the nineties' novel in english by Indian women -- Meenakshi Bharat PART II: Critical reviews: 'Reading' women On her own terms: A reading of Shashi Deshpande's Small remidies -- Meenakshi Mukherjee Twins and lovers: Arundhati Roy's The god of small things -- Rukmini Bhaya Nair Strutting our stuff: Sujata Sankranti's The wrap and the weft -- Sharon Rundle Part III: Speaking for themselves: writers on writing Passion for India -- Nayantara Sahgal Discrete thoughts... -- Githa Hariharan On writing -- Manju Kak Why I have usually written as a man -- Neelum Saran Gour No identity, no self! -- Sujata Sankranti On writing fiction -- Susan Visvanathan