Description: A study of the origins, nature and role of fantasy literature in early 19th century colonial India, this book explores how speculative writing was produced in the context of, and in resistance to, empire.
Brief description: Dimitra Fimi is Senior Lecturer in Fantasy and Children's Literature at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. She has published monographs on J.R.R. Tolkien and Celtic-inspired children's Fantasy, as well as articles and essays on myth and Fantasy, medievalism, world-building, adaptation, artlangs, and visual culture. She has co-edited Tolkien's manuscripts on invented languages, and has won awards for her books and essays. She sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Tolkien Research and co-edits the Perspectives on Fantasy series.
Review Quotes: "Mayurika Chakravorty's Fantasy and the Politics of Subversion: Speculative Writing in Colonial India is a significant intervention not only in South Asian literary scholarship but also in the global conversations about fantasy as a form of political subversion ... [it] deserves critical attention as a significantly valuable text for its contextual and textual rigour, deep engagement with the politics of genre, and interrogation of colonial reasoning, which extends and enriches postcolonial literary studies by positioning fantasy as an epistemic intervention rather than escapism." --Global South Literary Studies