Description:
This book investigates literary fiction written about disasters in contemporary South Asia and Southern Africa.
Review Quotes: "As climate change deepens planetary compound crises--of unstable markets, poor crop yields, new pandemics, and refugee displacement--this book's examination of time, narrative, and disaster will remain essential reading for years to come." --Treasa De Loughry, Wasafiri
"Disaster fiction, in Rastogi's impressive and commanding analysis, is not a sensationalist thrill ride, but a surprising route to the core concerns of anticolonial art and politics." --Liam O'Loughlin, Journal of Postcolonial Writing "Postcolonial Disaster . . . engages with and articulates contemporary forms of the originary concerns of postcolonial theory, and pushes back on mostly accepted ideas of canon formation. Truly a book for our times." --Meghan Gorman-DaRif, South Asian Review "Rastogi's . . . focus on the pedagogical aspect of disaster stories . . . is particularly compelling in our current disaster ridden historical moment. Postcolonial Disaster teaches us how to read such stories--and especially their fictional counterparts--as aesthetic objects and as crucial tools for future survival. As much as scholars of postcolonial literature, disaster, trauma, narratology, and environmental humanities (among others) will find Rastogi's text instructive, so might the casual reader of contemporary fiction. As timely as Rastogi's book is now, it promises only to become more so as we push forward into an increasingly climate-changing world." --Carolyn Ownbey, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies