Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Conversations in Bloomsbury
- 3 Comrade Kirillov
- 4 ‘A Horse and Two Goats’
- 5 The Tale of an Indian Education
- 6 ‘Clip Joint’
- 7 Cultural and Political Allegory in Rich Like Us
- 8 Towards Redefining Boundaries
- 9 The Golden Gate and the Quest for Self-Realization
- 10 Journey to Ithaca An Epistle on the Fiction of the 1980s and 1990s
- 11 Cuckold in Indian English Fiction
- 12 Stephanians and Others
- Works Cited
- Index
10 - Journey to Ithaca An Epistle on the Fiction of the 1980s and 1990s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Conversations in Bloomsbury
- 3 Comrade Kirillov
- 4 ‘A Horse and Two Goats’
- 5 The Tale of an Indian Education
- 6 ‘Clip Joint’
- 7 Cultural and Political Allegory in Rich Like Us
- 8 Towards Redefining Boundaries
- 9 The Golden Gate and the Quest for Self-Realization
- 10 Journey to Ithaca An Epistle on the Fiction of the 1980s and 1990s
- 11 Cuckold in Indian English Fiction
- 12 Stephanians and Others
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
The title of this chapter refers to at least four texts. The first two texts are suggested by Ithaca, the city of the birth and return of the great Greek hero, Odysseus, the protagonist of the Homeric epic, Odyssey, and thus brings to mind the great classical text. It is also the title of a famous poem by C P Cavafy (1863–1933), a major Greek poet. The poem, over the years, has become a commonplace metaphor for the importance of journeys over arrivals. Especially in the Rae Delven translation, it has acquired a popular, even cultic following in the English speaking world, with celebrities such as Sean Connery reading it. It has also been quoted in full by the internationally best-selling novelist Paulo Coelho in his book The Zahir: A Novel of Obssession (2005). Coelho does not acknowledge that Anita Desai had used it earlier, in almost the same opening location of her novel, Journey to Ithaca, which is the principal concern of this chapter. But the phrase also refers to the title this very chapter in which I consider a reading of the fiction of the 1980s and 1990s (FEN) itself as a sort of journey to Ithaca, that is, an interesting expedition with a disappointing arrival.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Another CanonIndian Texts and Traditions in English, pp. 114 - 129Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2009