Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-232) and index
Introduction: Why dissent matters to literature -- pt. 1. The colonial period. Anti-imperialist wit in Horace Walpole's letters ; Burke's India campaign: Goliath, scourge, redeemer ; William Henry Sleeman and the Suttee romance ; Victorian oblivion and The moonstone -- pt. 2. After independence. The beast in Nirad Chaudhuri's garden ; The politics of cultural freedom: India in the 1950s ; Individuality as a problem in Naipaul's Indian narratives ; Epilogue: Pankaj Mishra and postcolonial cosmopolitanism
This study reinstates the author at the centre of the relationship between literature and history. It explores the tension between "discourse analysis" and literary criticism, then discusses writers who have achieved a measure of freedom from the limitations of their historical moments
