The fiction of Arundhati Roy and Githa Hariharananother world is possible

Abstract

This book analyzes the intersections of gender, caste and the (re)telling of history in the narratives by two contemporary South-Asian woman writers in English of Malayalam descent, Arundhati Roy and Githa Hariharan. The authors have chosen two novels: The Thousand Faces of Night (1992)- winner of the Commomwealth Prize for Best First Book- by Githa Hariharan; and the God of Small Things- winner of the Booker Prize in 1997- by Arundhati Roy. Githa Hariharan represents the reality for a considerable section of Indian womanhood inserted in a brahminical, high class environment , and Arundhati Roy depicts the fatal consequences of the inter-caste sexual relations in a supposedly caste-less Christian and at the same time communist community. The overall purpose of this study is to unravel, expose and analyze how this authors create new possibilities, using two main strategies: first, re-defining female subjectivity in the stories, that is, creating history, is in itself a way of producing new entities, new identities. Consequently, from this angle, plotting family and lineage is very relevant. Roy�s and Hariharan�s stories call for a re-vision and transformation in the three main power structures �State, Religion and Family- subverting, thus, the canon and claiming the subalterns� space in History.