This large and very detailed book completes the work on South and Southeast Asia begun in the previous volume in this series: The world novel in English to 1950. That volume offered single chapters on ‘The Indian novel in English’ and ‘Malaya and Singapore’, both to 1950, alongside other chapters on the Caribbean, Canada, Australasia, Oceania and even Antarctica—in summary, ‘the novel in English in countries other than Britain and the United States over four and a half centuries’ (p. 1).
In volume 10, these two chapters on India, Malaya and Singapore, are extended to 41 chapters, which cover the whole of South Asia (Part l) and Southeast Asia (Part ll) after 1950. These two regions are given a roughly equal share of the pages in the book (276 and 243, respectively).
The overall approach taken to each region is the same. Each part begins with chapters on the novel in the various nations of the region. There are separate chapters on: (Part l) India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh; (Part ll) Mainland China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Myanmar; as well as additional chapters on adjoining Asian regions, such as (Part lll) the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.
Both sets of national surveys are followed by a consideration of the major ‘Themes and Genres’ of these novels. The themes range widely. They include the end of empire; personal and national histories; borderlands; gender, sexuality and the family; globalisation; the environment; caste; language; life-writing; the Cold War (which adds Korea and Vietnam to the list of countries discussed); genre fiction (especially ‘chick lit’) and the graphic novel (that is, comics). The essays on South Asia have a broader, more cultural focus; those on Southeast Asia place more emphasis on language and on the challenge of national languages to English.
These topics are, thirdly, followed by biographies of some of the ‘Key Authors’ of these regions: for South Asia, R.K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh; for Southeast Asia, Ellen Chang, Timothy Mo, F. Sional José, K.S. Maniam and Tash Aw.
The essays are uniformly of a very high standard. Nevertheless, significant questions need to be asked about the literary critical methodology on which the volume is based.
The first question is: Who writes the South and Southeast Asian novel in ‘the Anglophone literary sphere’ (p. 39)? Who qualifies as a South or Southeast Asian author? There are different answers to this question. Firstly, we have ‘insider’ writing by persons born and continuously resident in one of those particular nations. Secondly, there is writing by persons born into a particular South or Southeast Asian nation but no longer resident there (11 of the 26 authors referred to in the chapter on Pakistan are ‘NRBs’, non-resident Bangladeshis, ‘and there are a number of others with hyphenated nationalities’ (p. 87).) Thirdly, there is ‘writing about’ the different nations by ‘outsiders’: travellers, visitors, passing academics, and so on. The chapter on Myanmar, for example, discusses the work of Joseph Conrad and George Orwell, Daniel Mason, Michio Takeyama (translated from the Japanese), Richard Flanagan, Michelle Aung Thin (born in Myanmar but left for Canada shortly thereafter and now resident in Australia), and Wendy Law-Yone (born in Mandalay but lived in America after the age of 20), among others. The perspectives on Vietnam in English mainly come, as one might expect, from American authors (apart from Graham Greene) with a few Vietnamese exceptions: Duong Thu Huong (now resident in Paris and most extensively translated into French) and Bao Ninh (translated into English by Phan Thanh Hao, freely revised by Australian journalist Frank Palmos). It is arguable that Duong and Bao Ninh exist primarily in translation because they were critical of the role of the communist state in what Vietnamese call the American War. A potential fourth category of literature in English, thus includes the work done by translators. Different chapters use different mixes of these four categories of books and authors. Without the visitors, exiles and translators, these chapters would be much thinner.
A second and largely ignored set of questions has to do with the relationship of Anglophone writing to the vernacular literatures in all of those countries. Does the novel in English draw on local vernacular literatures? Does it feed into vernacular literatures? What else is happening in South and Southeast Asian societies and how do the works discussed here relate to that? Vernacular languages, literatures and societies are the ‘elephants in the room’, as far as this book is concerned. There is a fairly light interest in politics, economics and social change and very little at all in indigenous writing and ordinary daily experience. The Malaysian government's promotion of Malay during the 1970s, for example, is referred to several times as an unfortunate example of ‘a setback’ and an act of ‘state repression’ (pp. xxv, 324, 370). There is no discussion of the arguments in favour of Malay and the place of the language in the 1957 Constitution.
We can usefully compare volume 10 with volume 11, The novel in Africa and the Caribbean since 1950, which provides wide-ranging chapters on the whole continent. These chapters deal in a logical sequence with ‘the reinvention of the novel in Africa’, the novel and decolonisation, expatriate authors, women novelists, gender and sexuality, apartheid, human rights, orality, romance and realism, modernism, autobiography, African fiction in a global context, the novel in translation, the question of language, critical approaches, theories and debates. The national focus in volume 10 means that the same questions are frequently repeated and many similar, and sometimes different, answers given. It takes much time and effort to connect the various essays. Volume 11 is Afrocentric, 10 is Anglocentric. The ‘elite readers’ (p. xxiv) who buy this elegant book will probably be interested in only one, or a few, chapters, and unwilling to learn about other national literatures.
The third question is whether this book is really an exercise in ‘celebratory English’, a defence against the accusation that the novel in English is simply a colonial relic, condemned to wither with the increasing importance of national languages? (In his book English and the discourses of colonialism [1998]. the Australian scholar Alastair Pennycook uses the term ‘celebratory’ to describe a form of colonial discourse about the superiority of English to other languages because of its intrinsic nature and dominant position throughout the world). In response to the diversity of the chapters, editor Alex Tickell provides an important Introduction which attempts to provide a unifying overview of the issues raised by the various essays. There is no shortage of celebration as he touches on the ‘often migrant or diasporic personal background of the authors’ (p. xxi); the educational, economic and cultural value of knowing English (p. xxiii); the severe impact of national languages on the legitimacy of English (p. xxix); the impact of decolonisation and then globalisation in promoting oppositions between rural and urban traditions and modernity, and greater individualism (p. xxix); the global development of the novel form (p. xxvi); the value of non-European authors as ‘native informants’ (p. xxx); the improved position of women writers (p. xxxii); and, finally, perceptions of Europe and America as the centre, and South and Southeast Asia as the periphery (p. xxxiv).
Throughout the book we find many other bold claims. English is of benefit ‘in every practical sphere and in higher learning’ (p. 76). It is politically strategic: regrettably ‘English might have become a strong regional link between British and American spheres of influence, but local traditions developed separately’ (p. 366). English even gives Anglophone writers an advantage in the possession of a finer sensibility. N.V.M. Gonzalez's A season of grace is ‘poor in plot’ but ‘rich in atmosphere. Its imagery and scenery vivid, its pace as slow and measured as the cycle of country life’ (p. 311). English can do all that a vernacular can and more. It also makes writers more linguistically aware: ‘Writers who live in a multilingual environment and write in one of several national or official languages—including a formerly colonial language—must inevitably develop a more complex relationship with linguistic aspects of their literary craft than authors who work in a mother tongue they share with a wider national community of readers’ (p. xxii).
Best of all, writers in English ‘have an advantage over local untranslated authors in terms of readership and publication opportunities’ (p. 367). Writing in South and Southeast Asia is validated by winning awards in the West, which vernacular literatures can never do. For example, Rupa Bajwa ‘made waves by winning the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the First Book, Europe and South Asia region’ (p. 41) The success of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children allowed new writers to find ‘unprecedented acclaim in the West (and in India) in the form of a vastly expanded readership, serious critical attention, and highly publicised prizes’ (p. 3). Tash Aw's novels have been twice longlisted for the Man Booker Prize (2005 and 2013); he also won the 2005 Whitbread First Novel Award, and the O Henry Prize in 2013 (p. 512). Perhaps globalisation is just another term for conformity to Anglophone ways and market forces: the prizes are the reward for this conformity. After all, as a famous Malay writer once impolitely asked: ‘Who cares what the English think of us?’
