Indian Women in the House of Fiction

Like homeless wanderers, Indo-English women writers are constantly yearning for a home be it a nation, a house, a community, an identity to call their own. Gender, generation and cultural values shape Indian lifestyles at home and abroad even as they carry traces of old homes into new ones. A woman s place is at the heart of these evolving notions of home. In Search of Home traces how women recreate an idea of home through their fiction. The popularity of Indo-English literature both in India and abroad notwithstanding, the anxiety of Indianness still shadows authors and their works. Among women authors particularly the question of Indianness is represented in concerns of identities, nationalism, family or community values and gender roles. Home is often the site for the preservation, pedagogy and performance of Indianness. The author maps Indian English literature in India and the diaspora while situating it in the larger framework of world literature.