The critique of work by women writers, introduced in the present volume, bears evidence to the growing critical attention towards authors writing outside the mainstream, in America, Canada, and especially in India, as well as Indian émigré writers who can be seen sharing similar awareness and feelings regarding the womans angst and aspirations.
The articles in this volume cover a wide range of women writers including one from Britain, i.e. the canonized and perennially popular Charlotte Brontë, three from America, i.e. Flannery OConnor, widely known as the writer of Southern Gothic, Sylvia Plath and Tess Gallagher while Margaret Atwood figures, as usual. In addition to this, a bunch of Indian avant-garde writers of our own times, ranging from literary doyens like Shashi Deshpande and Anita Desai, to young avant-gardes, namely Githa Hariharan, Radhika Jha, Arundhati Roy, Chitra Divakaruni, Bharati Mukherjee and Shobha De, to the promising new generation of prize¬winners like Jhumpa Lahiri, and Kiran Desai.
Since most of the authors discussed in these articles are prescribed in the English syllabi in the universities of India, both the teachers and the students will find the book extremely useful, and the general readers who are interested in literature in English and/or women writers will also find them intellectually stimulating.