ABOUT BOOK

Approaches to world literature often think through binaries of local/global, ~major/minor, provincial/cosmopolitan, taking them as given positions on a single world map. ~To an extent, this is true of Amitav Ghosh’s prize-winning essay “The testimony of my ~grandfather’s bookcase” (1998), which reflects on his grandfather’s collection of world ~literature books to think about the relationship between his grandfather’s provincial location ~in Calcutta and the world. Yet in The Shadow Lines Ghosh takes a much more complex and ~interesting approach to space, the world, perception and narration. In the novel’s complex ~narration, space, time, and self always appeared mirrored through other people, times, and ~spaces. Places also acquire reality and meaning only after they are first narrated and imagined, ~often several times, and before they are experienced directly. This is a stance that has deep ~existential but also epistemological implications that go beyond “simply” critiquing colonial ~and national border-making. This essay explores how (and which) spaces become ~“significant” in the novel, and how the novel’s approach to space can be productive for ~thinking about world literature.