A Perpetuity of Lesser Emptiness: The Social Space of the Postcolonial Small Town and Vinod Kumar Shukla's Naukar ki kamiz

Sperner, Philipp (2021): A Perpetuity of Lesser Emptiness: The Social Space of the Postcolonial Small Town and Vinod Kumar Shukla's Naukar ki kamiz. In: Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 3: pp. 380-395

Abstract

The article provides an analysis of the spatial configuration of the Hindi novel Naukar ki kamiz by Vinod Kumar Shukla (translated into English as The Servant's Shirt). In highlighting the argumentative and structural similarities between the content of the novel and various concepts of social space and literary spatiality developed by Catherine Regulier, Henri Lefebrve, Edward Soja, Mikhail Bakhtin, and others, the article proposes to read the novel not only as a rare example of a detailed engagement with the social space of a postcolonial small town, but also as a text that provides a useful method and indeed a theory for the analysis of such a small town and its literary representation.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Languages and Literatures > Department 1
• Subjects: 400 Language > 400 Language
• ISSN: 2052-2614
• Language: English