Devanura Mahadeva: The Prose of Alterity (Writer in Context)

Devanura Mahadeva’s is a powerful and influential voice in contemporary South Asian and Dalit literature.His compact oeuvre has been widely commented upon in Kannada and, occasionally, in English as well.They have changed existing views among Kannada readers on literature’s relationship with situated practices of caste, gender and politics, and humankind’s larger quest for freedom.Much of this remains unknown beyond the Kannada-speaking region. This book is a sustained engagement with Mahadeva’s work that seeks to fill this lacuna.It includes translations of select samples of Mahadeva’s fiction and nonfiction writings and some of the major responses to these works from Kannada.In addition, there are essays by leading scholars of Kannada literature and language that explore the place that Mahadeva enjoys as a public intellectual in the region, aspects of language, caste and gender in his writings, and the challenges of translating his works which borrow deeply from oral linguistic and m