Routledge Joginder Paul: The Writerly Writer (Writer in Context)

This book is a comprehensive volume on the life and works of Joginder Paul, a well-known Urdu fiction writer and thinker. It presents a selection from the writer’s oeuvre – a few of his short stories, extracts from his long fiction, samples of his micro-fiction, personal reminiscences, and some of his incisive critical essays written in Urdu as well as in English that lay out his ideas on the role of the writer and the art of writing. The volume also contextualises his work within the Urdu literary tradition and beyond through some critical essays on him from across time and geography. It situates Paul as a notable fiction writer and an essayist who broke convention in his writing and crafted his own individual style. It shows how he was received in Urdu while also placing him as an important creative voice within a larger pan-Indian literary context. The book also focuses on Paul’s efforts to effect a change in how fiction should be perceived, particularly by his readers who he considered the most important ally-participant in his effort to create stories. This volume will help to evolve a deeper understanding of the thematic subtleties in his fiction, as well as the critical perspectives he offers in his non-fiction. Part of the Writer in Context series, this book will be indispensable to scholars and researchers in literature, history, sociology, language and creative writing, Partition studies, translation studies, Indian writings, Urdu literature, postcolonial studies, and South Asian Studies. About the Author Chandana Dutta is an author, editor, and translator. She holds a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has been Assistant Director for Katha Vilasam, the publishing wing of Katha, an organisation that pioneered translations in India. She set up the publishing outfit Indialog of which she was Chief Editor. She was Editor of Indian Horizons, a quarterly journal on art and culture published by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi. She has been Adjunct Faculty for the Masters Programme in Publishing at the Ambedkar University Delhi. She translates from Hindi and Bangla into English. She is the author of My Other Half: Krishna Paul in Conversation with Chandana Dutta (2019) and co-author of a monograph on Joginder Paul (Sahitya Akademi 2021).