The faces of Carnival in Anita Desai's In custody

Résumé

This book offers a culturally-specific reading of Anita Desai’s In Custody informed by indigenous practices and beliefs, which enables global audiences to access contemporary Indian writing in English. It shows that certain constants in multiple belief-systems also allow points of entry, particularly in light of the internationalization of literatures in the post-colonial period. The author argues that Desai’s novel configures the writer’s view of and engagement with global society. It exemplifies transnational writings rooted in different canons which have always migrated, mixed, and mutated.

Marta Dvorák investigates the intertextual dialogue programmed into Desai’s novel, which is part of the intercultural practices grounded in both relativism and universalism (Homi Bhabha). She shows how literature encodes ideologies, and how the ideologies are presented through the cultural filter of the author’s discourse conditioning readerly responses. Her study engages with the hybridized narrative traditions of English-language Indian writing, showing how narratives circulate from one culture to another, displacing the migrant symbols and myths through which our global society manufactures meaning.