Abstract

This dissertation provides a window on literary India, through a carefully curated database of Hindi novels, an analysis of the sociology of translation, and a comparison of Indian English-language novels with Hindi novels in English translation. The database fills a gap in the existing archives of contemporary Indian literature, while also serving as the basis for my analysis. The dissertation contextualizes and evaluates this database along the vectors of caste, gender, and religion to showcase biases in the social conditions that produce translations. It finds that postcolonial studies, an academic field developed in US and West European institutions in the last few decades, has produced a literature rooted in the worldviews of India’s upper classes. Novels written in Indian regional languages, by contrast, challenge received notions of postcoloniality. By comparing Indian English novels like Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie, 1981) and The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy, 1997) with Hindi novels in translation like Chittacobra (Mridula Garg, 1979) and A Window Lived in the Wall (Vinod Kumar Shukla, 1997), I show that the two sets represent two distinct “worlds.” English-language novels often allegorically center themes of nation, religion and historical milestones in colonial and postcolonial history, while Hindi novels more often dramatize local social life, existential dilemmas, the body, and the environment.

Committee Chair

ANCA PARVULESCU

Committee Members

BHAVYA TIWARI; GABRIELLE KIRILLOFF; J DILLON BROWN; MATT ERLIN

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Comparative Literature

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

7-7-2026

Language

English (en)

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Available for download on Thursday, July 06, 2028

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