City Fictions of the New India

How does Indian fiction imagine urban transformation? India's cities were once maligned as places of economic stasis and deprivation but in the era of the so-called New India (2000-present) centres like Delhi and Mumbai have been recast as 'engines of economic growth' and reshaped by prestige infrastructure. Yet the provision of core infrastructures for all remains a major challenge for urban governance. City Fictions is the first study of its kind to read anglophone Indian writing infrastructurally: by taking account of the centrality of water utilities, waste-processing, residential architecture, and road, rail, and telephonic networks in contemporary representations of urban citizenship. In a detailed, historicized account of India's changing cities City Fictions analyses selected literary works in relation to key governmental and political discourses: from early nationalist ideas of command-economy infrastructure and mid-century town planning to futuristic visions of the Heritage Cities, Smart Cities and new urban satellite developments. It also plots changing ideas about civic identity, shaped by the rise of a consumerist middle class and the consolidation of a popular Hindu majoritarian politics. In the process, City Fictions develops an interdisciplinary literary-critical approach that draws on eco-criticism, urbanism, and new materialism. Covering key fictions by Arundhati Roy, Aravind Adiga, Vikram Chandra, Raj Kamal Jha, and Githa Hariharan, as well as literary journalism by Katherine Boo and Saumya Roy, graphic fiction by Sarnath Banerjee, and television drama by Richie Mehta, this book shows how fiction discloses vital issues of collective rights, equality, and resourcing that are immanent in the infrastructure of India's cities.

Alex Tickell studied English at the University of Leeds, researching South Asian fiction for his PhD, and subsequently taught at the University of York. Tickell joined the Open University in 2011 and is Director of the OU's Postcolonial and Global Literatures Research Group. He focuses on conjunctions of literature, politics, and infrastructure in South Asian and Southeast Asian Anglophone writing, and he has received AHRC and Leverhulme Trust funding for his research. Tickell edited The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume 10, covering South and Southeast Asia, and in 2022 co-curated the British Library's 'Chinese and British' exhibition.