Lexington Books
Pages: 222
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-4985-7196-8 • Hardback • October 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
978-1-4985-7197-5 • eBook • October 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
Amy L. Friedman is associate professor in English and Liberal Studies at Temple University.
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Menippean Satire and Counter-realism in Indian Postcolonial Fictions
Chapter 2: G.V. Desani’s Postcolonial Menippean Satiric Subversions
Chapter 3: Aubrey Menen and Menippean Wit
Chapter 4: Salman Rushdie's Menippean Strategies of Language
Chapter 5: Irwin Allan Sealy’s Menippean Strategies of Form
Conclusion: From Hatterr to Trotter and Beyond
Bibliography
Index
About the author
In this scrupulously researched study, Amy L. Friedman clears fertile theoretical ground on which to interpret some of India’s most capacious and impudent novels. Fictions often labelled magic realism or postmodern fabulation are convincingly re-visioned here as Menippean satire, and an elusive, ancient genre gains an exponent finely attuned to its powerful sway on the postcolonial literary imagination.
— John C. Ball, University of New Brunswick
Dr. Friedman brings a sharp eye, a good ear for languages, and incisive intelligence to the task of unravelling deliberately challenging fictions by four postcolonial Indian writers. She gives particular explanatory emphasis to their skillful deployment of age-old strategies of Menippean satire -- literary echoes and glancing allusions to earlier culture, ironical subversions, unexpected sidetracks or authorial interventions -- to jar their readers into critical awareness. Handling these unwieldy materials with confident energy, Dr. Friedman appreciates the carnivalesque qualities of improbable characters and wandering stories even as she demonstrates the ethical seriousness of the underlying satire. In the end she conveys persuasively the double aspect of postcolonial satiric creativity: sophisticated writers look over their shoulders at influential cultural antecedents all the while they reach forward to establish artistic and political independence.
— Peter Briggs, Professor Emeritus of English, Bryn Mawr College