richa mehndiratta

#Definitely a must read! This review got a lot deeper than I meant it to be. I had no idea that the book contained such heavy and meaningful ideas under the surface until I read it (Thrice). The purpose of this book, as I could understand is to understand anew and from a number of different perspectives the highly complex and controversial relation between literature and society. This is not meant to be a study in sociology or political science; the analysis of Indian literature – its structure, content, function, and effect – is our primary concern. Nikhil has given an open idea of how the imaginative work is rooted in and grows out of the parent social body, to what extent it is influenced in subject matter as well as a technique by the dominant climate of ideas in a given historical period, and to what degree and in what manner literature “influences” the society to which it is addressed. The stream of literary influence is of-course difficult to trace or track to its putative source, for here we are not dealing, as in science, with isolated physical phenomena which can be fitted precisely within some cause-and-effect pattern. The relationship between literature and society is far more complex than social scientists or cultural critics commonly assume.