ASIA OVER LUNCH LECTURE – Noon in 4130 Posvar. Please feel free to join us for this lecture – all are welcome to bring their lunch or a snack along if you wish and enjoy!
Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance (1995) is part of a tradition of epic-scale anglophone novels about India inaugurated by Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981). Like other later novelists such as Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Chandra, Mistry opts for storytelling through Realism rejecting Rushdie’s magical realism. This talk has three major concerns: the reception of Realism within postcolonial studies generally; A Fine Balance in relation to earlier Indian writing; and a detailed reading of the Indian Emergency of 1975-1977 as represented in the novel.

This lecture is associated with the upcoming conference: “The Anglophone-Asian Novels, 1945-Present” taking place at Pitt on December 2-4, 2011.

Please note that during the fall term, this series will be held on Wednesdays. In spring term, it will return to its usual Thursday schedule. Everyone is welcome to attend.