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Publication Announcement
Britain and India: Cross-cultural Encounters
18 May 2012
Taylor & Francis
Wasafiri, the Magazine of International Contemporary Writing, is pleased to announce the publication of our new Special Issue, ‘Britain and India: Cross-cultural Encounters’.
The issue features some of the most gifted South Asian writers and poets of the 1920s and ’30s, includes interviews with Amitav Ghosh and Nayantara Sahgal, and interrogates the impact of South Asian publishing, theatre, art and film in Britain in the early twentieth century.
Guest editor Florian Stadtler writes:
Conceptualised as a ‘Retro’ edition, this Special Issue of Wasafiri turns back the clock to present some of the best of yesteryear’s contemporary South Asian writing today. Opening a window onto the publishing culture of the time, the short fiction and poetry in the issue are framed by essays highlighting South Asian contributions to diverse forms of cultural expression ranging from drama, fiction, film and poetry to visual art. The magazine’s content is underpinned by the research of the three-year AHRC-funded interdisciplinary project, ‘Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950’ (2007-10), which explored South Asian participation in intellectual and literary networks, art movements and activist groupings during this less-explored period of Britain’s multicultural history. The material featured highlights South Asians’ often fraught and dissenting interactions with Britain’s cultural establishment, which provoked questions around citizenship, cultural and trans-cultural identity, still relevant in today’s context.
This Special Issue of Wasafiri features some of the most gifted South Asian writers and poets of the 1920s and ’30s, including Mulk Raj Anand, Attia Hosain, Iqbal Singh and Cedric Dover among others. It also includes interviews with two acclaimed contemporary authors, Amitav Ghosh and Nayantara Sahgal — who both explore the past to understand what that means for the present and the future. In addition, the impact of South Asian publishing, theatre, art and film in Britain in the early twentieth century are interrogated in a series of thought-provoking articles, whilst the Review Section includes coverage of Asian British history, classic and new fiction and life writing. ‘Britain and India: Cross-cultural Encounters’ uncovers a little known history of the UK’s past cultural encounters with South Asia and offers us keen insights into how we might build on such foundations in the twenty-first century.
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The following events are also linked to the publication of this Special Issue of Wasafiri:
* A visual exhibition, ‘South Asians Making Britain 1858-1950’ at Asia House, 63 New Cavendish Street, London W1G 7LP during their Festival of Asian Literature from 9 to 21 May 2012. See the Asia House website for more details.
* A discussion event, ‘Writing Beyond the Frame: Asians in Bloomsbury’, with Elleke Boehmer, Romesh Gunesekera and Sukhdev Sandhu, chaired by Wasafiri editor Susheila Nasta at the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival on Sunday 8 July 2012 at 12.00 pm. See the Southbank Centre website for more details.
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Contents of Britain and India: Cross-cultural Encounters
Florian Stadtler: Editorial
Susheila Nasta: In Conversation with Nayantara Sahgal
Bharati Sarabhai: Poem
M J Tambimuttu: Poem
Mulk Raj Anand: Fiction: The Terrorist
Rehana Ahmed: South Asians Writing Resistance in Wartime London: Indian Writing (1940-1942)
Alagu Subramaniam: Fiction: The Mathematician
Elleke Boehmer: Travel Writing: An Indian Traveller’s Tale in Bricolage
Anshuman Mondal and Elleke Boehmer: Networks and Traces: An Interview with Amitav Ghosh
Attia Hosain: Fiction: A Woman and a Child
Sarah Turner: ‘Alive and Significant’: ‘Aspects of Indian Art’, Stella Kramrisch and Dora Gordine in South Kensington c. 1940
Iqbal Singh: Tagore: A Determination
Cedric Dover: Poems
Balachandra Rajan: Poem
Priya Jaikumar: Sabu’s Skins: The Transnational Stardom of an Elephant Boy
Ahmed Ali: Fiction: Our Lane
Sumita Mukherjee: The Staging of Sakuntala in London from 1885 to the 1920s
Shafquat Towheed: Review Essay: South Asian writing between the wars: publishers, reviewers, readers
Reviews on:
Richard Sorabji: Opening Doors: The Untold Story of Cornelia Sorabji
Santanu Das, ed: Race, Empire and First World War Writing
Rupert Richard Arrowsmith: Modernism and the Museum
Debashish Banerji: The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore: The Essential Tagore, Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarty, ed
Attia Hosain: Phoenix Fled and Other Stories and Sunlight on a Broken Column
Zohra Segal: Close-Up: Memoirs of a Life on Stage and Screen
Colin Chambers: Black and Asian Theatre in Britain
C L Innes: A History of Black and Asian Writing in Britain
Amitav Ghosh: River of Smoke
Hema Macherla: Blue Eyes
Mita Kapur: The F-Word
Saumya Balsari: The Cambridge Curry Club
http://www.tandfonline.com/rwas