Literature of Return

This book examines the English travel memoirs of Indian returnees and their complex relationship with home, self-identity, and migration. Arguing that these memoirs form a distinct category within Indian writing in English - termed the ‘literature of return’ – it analyses how members of the Indian middle class who travelled to the West and spent significant time there negotiated their sense of belonging to India upon return.

The volume focuses on individual authors including Cornelia Sorabji, Jawaharlal Nehru, Santha Rama Rau, Ved Mehta, Dom Moraes, and Amitava Kumar. Through their writings, it reveals how the Indian middle class shaped their identity within India's development as a modern nation. By tracing how Indian Anglophone literature of return has evolved over time, it demonstrates that these texts offer important alternatives to the widely studied genre of Indian diasporic fiction. Focusing on journalistic prose writing in twenty-first-century texts, the volume identifies this as a new literary category for portraying modern India to international readers.

The book will appeal to scholars and researchers in postcolonial studies, Indian English literature, South Asian studies, cultural studies, literary history, travel writing, and English literature.