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MISCELLANEOUS Amit Chaudhuri. Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture. Oxford, England. Peter Lang. 2008. 330 pages. £12. 99/$ 19.99. isbn 978-1-906165-01-7
Amit Chaudhuri is a novelist, musician, and professor of contemporary literature. He won the Sahitya Academy Award for his novel A New World in 2002. In Clearing a Space, a collection of his essays written over the years for various journals and periodicals, he spells out his views on the relationship between the vernacular and English and the tussle and tension between the traditional and the modern in the formation of Indian writing in English.
Literary critics in India have been uncomfortable with Indian writing in English ever since its beginnings. First, they were beset with the question of whether Indians should write in...