© Columbia University Press
In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India
Paper, 368 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12585-7
$32.00
/ £22.00
April, 2002
Cloth, 368 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12584-0
$95.00
/ £65.50
"Fascinating. . . a truly remarkable piece of scholarship. . . stimulating." — Choice
"Joshi's research . . . achieve[s] a historical richness and intimacy unmatched by any recent study of colonial or postcolonial literature. What makes In Another Country methodologically original is the subtlety with which it situates political meaning . . . An unstoppable read." — Leah Price, Victorian Studies
"This innovative and ambitious book challenges simplistic hegemonic perspectives on colonialism and culture, intervening imaginatively into current discussions of the development of the novel in English and . . . [its] global travels. In lively, engaging prose, In Another Country mines library records, publishers' archives, and works by Indian writers to glean new understandings of how English books were read in India in the nineteenth century and of the process by which consumers of those books became producers of Indian literature in English. As Joshi's ingenious reconstruction of the consumption practices of nineteenth-century India's resistant readers predicts, the tradition of the Indian novel that emerged in the twentieth century transmuted its colonial legacy in unpredictable ways that ultimately reversed the priorities of Englishness and empire." — Citation of the MLA Prize for a First Book Committee
"This welcome book shows how India and Indians, over time, indigenized English novels to reflect their ideas, experiences, and realities . . . Thankfully, this study shows how notable Indian responses, experiments, and critical voices constantly complemented, engaged, and reimagined the British counterpart." — Charles Lindholm, Journal of Asian Studies
"This study of the impact of the English novel on nineteenth-and twentieth-century India is an important contribution to Indian book history. . . . many of Joshi's findings are new and startling and ought to stimulate further studies and enquiries in the field of Indian book history." — Rimi B. Chatterjee, SHARP News
"Joshi's interpretations are nuanced and careful...Joshi does excellent work as a critical reader of texts." — Henry Schwarz, Modern Language QuarterlyGeorgetown University
"Combining valuable empirical research with perceptive cultural analysis, Priya Joshi opens up a new field in the study of the novel. Her meticulous collection of data on the import of British novels in colonial India and the nature of their dissemination and reception provide a background for understanding subsequent literary production in India. The book traverses the colonial and the postcolonial, using tools of historical research and literary criticism to explore areas of cultural negotiation not charted by anyone so far."" — Meenakshi Mukherjee, author of Perishable Empire
"Much more than a history of the English-language novel in India, In Another Country opens up a global field of the 'English novel'well before postmodernity, with influences flowing both ways: between reception and production, between colony and metropole. All scholars of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature will need to reckon with Priya Joshi's innovative synthesis of cultural criticism and book history, as it redraws the map of modern fiction on a world scale." — Ian Duncan, University of California, Berkeley
"Joshi's research into the colonial archives of the 'book' is extensive and meticulous. The intriguing fact that colonial Indians were such avid fans of English popular fiction is one that has certainly been remarked before but not explored, let alone explained. . . . Her pioneering research provides answers to many literary historical puzzles, opens up new areas of discussion, and will inspire others to follow into the terrain she has marked out." — Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Wolfson College, Oxford University