In her detailed readings of a wide range of Indian writers – including Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Anita Nair, Jhumpa Lahiri and many others – Geetanjali Singh Chanda focuses on domestic spaces in women’s fiction. The house is not merely a backdrop, but often almost a character itself, one that bears witness to the changes in the protagonists’ lives. Chanda shows how women in these fictional homes find ways to transform restrictive, segregated spaces into a potentially empowering “womenspace,” one that can be found in bungalows and apartments alike. The book also analyzes the anxiety that still accompanies writing about India in English, and the many concerns about identity, language, nationalism, family, and community that are played out in the home.

An ambitious mapping of Indian English women’s literature, Indian Women in the House of Fiction claims an important space for its subject in the larger framework of world literatures.