Ecofeminism and the Indian Novel tests the theories of ecofeminism against the background of India’s often different perceptions of environmental problems, challenging the hegemony of Western culture in thinking about human problems. This book moves beyond a simple application of the concepts of ecofeminism, instead explaining the uniqueness of Indian novels as narratives of ecofeminism and how they can contribute to the development of the theory of ecofeminism. In examining a selection of novels, the author argues that Indian texts conceptualize the ecological crisis more as a human problem than as a gender problem. The book proposes that we should think of ecofeminism as ecohumanism instead, seeing human beings and nature as a part of a complex web. Novels analysed within the text include Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve (1954), Shivram Karanth’s Return to Earth (2002) and Na D’Souza’s Dweepa (2013). Ecofeminism and the Indian Novel will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecofeminism, ecocriticism, ecological feminism, environmental humanities, gender studies, ecological humanities, feminist studies and Indian literature.

Bringing together ecofeminism and ecological literary criticism (ecocriticism), this book presents diverse ways of understanding and responding to the tangled relationships between the personal, social, and environmental dimensions of human experience and expression. Literature and Ecofeminism explores the intersections of sexuality, gender, embodiment, and the natural world articulated in literary works from Shakespeare through to contemporary literature. Bringing together essays from a global group of contributors, this volume draws on American literature, as well as Spanish, South African, Taiwanese, and Indian literature, in order to further the dialogue between ecofeminism and ecocriticism and demonstrate the ongoing relevance of ecofeminism for facilitating critical readings of literature. In doing so, the book opens up multiple directions for ecofeminist ideas and practices, as well as new possibilities for interpreting literature. This comprehensive volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecocriticism, ecofeminism, literature, gender studies, and the environmental humanities.

From the widely acclaimed author of An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a powerful and triumphantly beautiful novel set in contemporary India, about a young woman forging a new life in the foothills of the Himalayas. LONGLISTED FOR THE 2011 MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE HINDU LITERARY PRIZE FOR BEST FICTION 2011 With her debut novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, Anuradha Roy’s exquisite storytelling instantly won readers’ hearts around the world, and the novel was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. Now, Roy has returned with another masterpiece that is already earning international prize attention, an evocative and deeply moving tale of a young woman making a new life for herself amid the foothills of the Himalaya. Desperate to leave a private tragedy behind, Maya abandons herself to the rhythms of the little village, where people coexist peacefully with nature. But all is not as it seems, and she soon learns that no refuge is remote enough to keep out the modern world. When power-hungry politicians threaten her beloved mountain community, Maya finds herself caught between the life she left behind and the new home she is determined to protect. Elegiac, witty, and profound by turns, and with a tender love story at its core, The Folded Earth brims with the same genius and love of language that made An Atlas of Impossible Longing an international success and confirms Anuradha Roy as a major literary talent.

The theory and praxis of ecofeminism has barely been investigated in an Indian context. Ecofeminism is an inclusive theory and provides an intersectional study of feminism, ecocriticism, and literature. Ecofeminism and Indian Women Writing in English unearths the sensibility of Indian women writings through the lens of ecofeminism. This book gives all the required details about ecofeminism, major movements and ecofeminist theories, in both the Indian as well as Western perspectives. It will help the readers understand the discourse of ecofeminism. The reader will get a thorough understanding on how to critically examine an ecofeminist element in a particular text. The book's main objective is to re(store) the cultural heritage of India against its colonial history that had mis(interpreted) the environmental ethics of Indian philosophy, affinity of women with nature and animals. The so-called developmental models of post-modern era will be beneficial only when they will focus on mutual sustainability of man and nature.

About the Author: Dipak Giri- M.A. (Double), B.Ed. - is a Ph. D. Research Scholar in Raiganj University, Raiganj, Uttar Dinajpur (W.B.). He is working as an Assistant Teacher in Katamari High School (H.S.), Cooch Behar, West Bengal. He is an Academic Counsellor in Netaji Subhas Open University, Cooch Behar College Study Centre, Cooch Behar, West Bengal. He was formerly Part Time Lecturer in Cooch Behar College, Vivekananda College and Thakur Panchanan Mahila Mahavidyalaya, West Bengal and worked as a Guest Lecturer in Dewanhat College, West Bengal. Along with this book on Woman-Nature Interface, he has also edited nine books on Indian English Drama, Indian English Novel, Postcolonial English Literature, New Woman in Indian Literature, Indian Women Novelists in English, Homosexuality in Contemporary Indian Literature, Transgender in Indian Context, Mahesh Dattani and Indian Diaspora Literature. He is a well-known academician and has published many scholarly research articles in books and journals of both national and international repute. His area of studies includes Postcolonial Literature, Indian Writing in English, Dalit Literature, Feminism and Gender Studies. About the Book: This present volume of nineteen essays presents a critical insight into the works of many writers of repute. All essays are woman and ecocentric where both woman and ecology are critically discussed. Along with literary essays, the volume also presents essays on other disciplines of learning. Hopefully this volume would try to reach many unexplored areas of knowledge and serve larger sections of humanity.

Following Françoise d’Eaubonne’s creation of the term “ecofeminism” in 1974, scholars around the world have explored ways that the degradation of the environment and the subjugation of women are linked. In the nearly three decades since the publication of the classical work Ecofeminism by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva in 1993, several collections have appeared that apply ecofeminism to literary criticism, also known as feminist ecocriticism. The most recent of these include anthologies that emphasize international perspectives, furthering the comparative task launched by Mies and Shiva. To date, however, there have been no books devoted to gaining a broad-based understanding of feminist ecocriticism in India, understood in its own terms. Our new volume Indian Feminist Ecocriticism offers a survey of literature as seen through an ecofeminist lens by Indian scholars, which places contemporary literary analysis through a sampling of its diverse languages and in the context of millennia-old mythic traditions of India.

An eco-spiritual search for light and life in a world inching towards dystopia Gift in Green, written originally in Malayalam, is a tantalizingly unconventional narrative that explores, on multiple levels, the pain and poetry that eventuate from the disruption of the intimate relationship between a people and their life-world, using water (the 'water-life' of the people of Aathi) as the overarching metaphor that mirrors the degradation of the society. Between the polarities of attachment and abandonment, darkness and light, predatory progress and the sheer will to survive, unfolds the saga of a people confronted by the behemoth of progress driven by Kumaran,who seeks to abandon water-life, threatening its very existence. But such is the author's faith in the resilience of life and nature and her belief in the futility of trying to control something as fluid and eternal as water-life that what promises to be the end is also the hope of a new beginning. This is the first instance in Indian literary history of a novel in a regional language being translated and published concurrently in English.