Digitalised Responses: Understanding the Digital Literary Spaces in the Light of Keshava Guha’s Accidental Magic

Abstract

Literature was quick to respond to emerging digital technologies in the late 1990s. Fiction writing and publishing took to the Internet, although traditional methods of print publication largely remained in place. However, it became evident that the literary world had embraced online platforms to produce and consume literature. Keshava Guha’s debut novel Accidental Magic (2019) captures this transformation from print to the digital world in the early 2000s. This paper is a study on how digital technology is adopted and utilised by literary readers in Accidental Magic. It also analyses digital technology’s impact on the art of storytelling. The paper concludes that online communities have introduced a new means of storytelling, which is now a two-way process, unlike what was the case in the pre-internet era. Also, mainstream literature is frequently and actively challenged – and promoted – on digital media. Guha’s novel illustrates how online platforms impact the lives of four people, suggesting that such platforms have the power to change the dynamics of human relationships and alter reader interactions with literature in general.