Book ReviewGender and Caste in the Anglophone‐Indian Novels of Arundhati Roy and Githa Hariharan: Feminist Issues in Cross‐Cultural Perspectives. By Antonia Navarro‐Tejero. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2005.

Abstract

A s the title of Antonia Navarro-Tejero’s slim but dense volume reveals, it is an ambitious undertaking. To examine gender and caste in two novels is perhaps an achievable task; to attempt to further examine “feminist issues in cross-cultural perspectives” can only obfuscate the chosen analytical frameworks and interpretations. Navarro-Tejero is highly successful in analyzing Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Githa Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces of Night. She diligently refers to Indian theorists and academics, relying primarily on scholarship by anglophone Indians to support her readings and substantiate her thesis. The book provides perhaps the most detailed analysis of the two novels I have yet seen. Readers may be disappointed, however, when Navarro-Tejero’s analysis of Hariharan’s work tapers off toward the middle of the volume as she focuses increasingly on Roy. This may be a political decision, given Roy’s greater popularity in Western academic circles, or it may simply be based on Navarro-Tejero’s greater ability to identify and interpret a novel set in an Indian-Christian milieu rather than in Hariharan’s complex Brahman one. Whatever the reason, Navarro-Tejero’s reticence in discussing Hariharan’s work weakens the comparative readings she attempts and dilutes her interpretations and assertions. Moreover, despite her best efforts to avoid an orientalist trap, NavarroTejero is also limited by her own cultural, historical, and political locations. The book is thus marred by unsubstantiated assertions such as “a number of Indian women novelists made their debut in the nineties producing novels which revealed the true state of Indian society and its treatment