Desai's Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard as Global Literature

Abstract

In her article "Desai's Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard as Global Literature" Erin M. Fehskens argues that scholars readily recognize Kiran Desai's Booker Prize winning second novel The Inheritance of Loss as world literature following David Damrosch's and Franco Moretti's notions. However, Desai's first novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is often overlooked. Although Hullabaloo's focus is narrow and local, its allegorical implications encode the processes of globalization and resistance to it into the novel. Thus, the novel can be read as an example of global literature, which uses the discontinuous nature of allegory to critique the de-differentiating practices of globalization and the specter of difference that accompanies these practices. Desai uses the return of Coca-Cola to India to illustrate the effects of multinational companies on the social and ecological landscapes of the Global South.