‘Genre fiction, particularly but not only in English, has been growing in popularity in India. This anthology is significant and necessary . . . It maps overlaps and contrasts between genre fiction in seven major Indian languages, and well combines literary exegesis with theoretical and historical readings . . . Drawing upon both Indian and non-Indian theoretical texts, the book does not just test Western definitions of genre fiction against the hard reality to genre texts from India, it also opens up space for a re-definition of such Western perceptions . . . A pioneering study that is interesting and well-timed’. Tabish Khair, author and Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Aarhus, Denmark STUDIES IN GLOBAL GENRE FICTION Series Editors: Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, University of Oslo, Norway and Taryne Jade Taylor, Embry- Riddle Aeronautical University, USA Studies in Global Genre Fiction offers original insights into the history of genre literature while contesting two hierarchies that constrain global genre fiction studies: (1) Anglophone literature and other global language literatures and (2) literary fiction and genre fiction. The series explores the exchanges between different literary cultures that form aesthetic concerns and the specific literary, sociopolitical, geographical, economic, and historical forces that shape genre fiction globally. A key focus is understudied genre fictions from the ‘global South’ – where geographical location or language often confines works to the margins of the global publishing industry, international circulation, and academic scrutiny, even if they may be widely read in their own specific contexts. Contributions to this series investigate the points of disruption, intersection and flows between literary and genre fiction. The series analyses cross-cultural influences in literary classifications, translation, transcreation, localization, production, and distribution while capturing the rich history of world and global literatures. Editorial Advisory Board Takayuki Tatsumi (Keio University, Japan) Dale Knickerbocker (East Carolina University, USA) Pawel Frelik (University of Warsaw, Poland) Joan Gordon (Nassau Community College/Science Fiction Studies, USA) Amy J. Ransom (Central Michigan University, USA) Farah Mendlesohn (Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy, UK) Rana Issa (American University of Beirut, Lebanon) Alexis Brooks de Vita (Texas Southern University, USA) M. Elizabeth Ginway (University of Florida, USA) Aino-Kaisa Koistinen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland) Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo, Norway) Abhijit Gupta (Jadavpur University, India) Suparno Banerjee (Texas State University, USA) Isiah Lavender III (Louisiana State University, USA) Book in this series INDIAN GENRE FICTION Pasts and Future Histories Edited by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Aakriti Mandhwani and Anwesha Maity For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Studies-in-Global-Genre-Fiction/book- series/SGGF INDIAN GENRE FICTION This volume maps the breadth and domain of genre literature in India across seven languages (Tamil, Urdu, Bangla, Hindi, Odia, Marathi and English) and nine genres for the first time. Over the last few decades, detective/crime fiction and especially science fiction/fantasy have slowly made their way into university curricula and consideration by literary critics in India and the West. However, there has been no substantial study of genre fiction in the Indian languages, least of all from a comparative perspective. This volume, with contributions from leading national and international scholars, addresses this lacuna in critical scholarship and provides an overview of diverse genre fictions. Using methods from literary analysis, book history and Indian aesthetic theories, the volume throws light on the variety of contexts in which genre literature is read, activated and used, from political debates surrounding national and regional identities to caste and class conflicts. It shows that Indian genre fiction (including pulp fiction, comics and graphic novels) transmutes across languages, time periods, in translation and through publication processes. While the book focuses on contemporary postcolonial genre literature production, it also draws connections to individual, centuries-long literary traditions of genre literature in the Indian subcontinent. Further, it traces contested hierarchies within these languages as well as current trends in genre fiction criticism. Lucid and comprehensive, this book will be of great interest to academics, students, practitioners, literary critics and historians in the fields of postcolonialism, genre studies, global genre fiction, media and popular culture, South Asian literature, Indian literature, detective fiction, science fiction, romance, crime fiction, horror, mythology, graphic novels, comparative literature and South Asian studies. It will also appeal to the informed general reader. Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay is a researcher at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research (Finfar, Finland) and Editor at the Museum of Science Fiction’s Journal of Science Fiction (MOSF, Washington, D.C.). He has formerly taught at the Universities of Oslo and Delhi, and has been visiting researcher at the Science Fiction Foundation at the University of Liverpool and the Evoke Lab (Calit2)/Department of Informatics at the University of California-Irvine. Aakriti Mandhwani is a researcher at the Department of South Asia, Faculty of Languages and Cultures, SOAS, University of London, UK. She works on North Indian middle-class reading practices through the archive of the post-1947 commercial magazine and paperback in Hindi. Her areas of interest include book history, popular literature, intellectual history and urban studies. Her works include articles in Modern Asian Studies and a volume on Hinglish edited by Francesca Orsini and Ravikant Sharma (both forthcoming in 2018). Anwesha Maity is a researcher at the Department of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies (CLFS), University of Wisconsin- Madison, USA, from where she also obtained her doctoral degree. Her research interests include science fiction and genre fiction, postcolonial criticism, translation studies, and Sanskrit aesthetics. She has published in Science Fiction Studies, Studies in the Fantastic and Jadavpur University Essays and Studies. INDIAN GENRE FICTION Pasts and Future Histories Edited by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Aakriti Mandhwani and Anwesha Maity First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Aakriti Mandhwani and Anwesha Maity; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Aakriti Mandhwani and Anwesha Maity to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-55998-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-45616-9 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS List of contributors xi Introduction: Indian genre fiction – languages, literatures, classifications 1 BODHISATTVA CHATTOPADHYAY, AAKRITI MANDHWANI AND ANWESHA MAITY PART I Emergence of distinctions 15 1 Literary and popular fiction in late colonial Tamil Nadu 17 PREETHA MANI 2 Homage to a ‘Magic-Writer’: the Mistrīz and Asrār novels of Urdu 38 C.M. NAIM 3 A series of unfortunate events: natural calamities in 19th-century Bengali chapbooks 57 ARITRA CHAKRABORTI 4 Explorers of subversive knowledge: the science fantasy of Leela Majumdar and Sukumar Ray 73 DEBJANI SENGUPTA ix