This volume studies the representation of religion in South Asian Anglophone literature of the 20th and 21st century. It traces the contours of South Asian writing through the consequences of the complex contesting forces of blasphemy and secularization.

IntroductionPart 1Religion, Agency and Cultural Memory1. Fear of the Other: Narrator and Narratives in Tabish Khair’s Night of Happiness and Jihadi Jane.Farddina Hussain2. Kurukshetra and Karbala: Mahabharata in Intizar Hussain’s Fiction.Haris Qadeer3. The Return of the Goddess: Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island and the Manasamangal. Swati Moitra4. “All true believers have good reasons for disbelieving in every god except their own” : Faith, doubt and poetics of secularism in The Enchantress of Florence. Sk. Sagir AliPart 2Ethnicity, Myth, Caste and Censorship5. The Poetics and the Politics of Kashmiriyat: A Study of Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator and The Book of Gold Leaves.Somjyoti Mridha6. Thinking the Body, Figuring (the) Woman Religion, Caste, Gender and Identity in Literary Representations.Arunima Ray7. Death of an author: Dissecting the notion of religious hurt sentiment vis-à-vis literary-political censorship in India through One Part Woman.Nasima Islam8. Religious Hegemony and Literature: Appropriation of Subaltern’s Parables in Amitav Ghosh’ The Hungry Tide.Jai SinghPart 3War, Trauma and History9. The “Long Shadow” of Bangladeshi Liberation War: Religion and Nationalism in Tahmima Anam’s Bengal Trilogy.Rimi Nath10. Situating Religiosity in 19th Century Assam: Reading Tilottama Mishra’s Swarnalata.Sibsankar Majumdar11. A Historian under Siege: Rethinking Secular Historiography.Kaushani Mondal12. “First a Friend and Then an Enemy”: Trauma, Fetish, and Binary Politics in The Black Coat.Avijit Basak13. Religion as the Messianic “Other” of Secular Modernity: Locating Habermas’ Post-Secular Society in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost.Swayamdipta Das