Mahasweta Devi: An Anthology of Recent Criticism

This volume examines the major works of Mahasweta Devi, recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award (1986) and the Bharatiya Jnanpith Award (1996). As a social activist who has consistently championed the cause of the tribal and other subaltern communities, she has also received the Ramon Magsaysay Award (1996) and the Padma Vibhushan (2006). The Essays in this volume Critique Mahasweta Devi's literary representations of the exploitation of the Marginal and dispossessed groups by the dominant Caste and class hierarchies, aided and abetted by greedy government officials and Political manipulators. They also unfold how she essentializes the aesthetics of literature as a weapon against such multiple oppressions, and inscribes the courage and resilience of several of her victim-protagonists in a crippling milieu. In larger perspective, the essays situate Mahasweta Devi in appropriate spaces of Postcolonial Writing, Translation Studies and Women's Writing, and reaffirm her status as an icon of Third World Literature in the First World Academia. Since critical readings, especially on her works in English translation, though ample, are scattered and piecemeal, this book-length Study brings together several of the major critical interventions on her oeuvre.