India in the Travel Narratives of V.S. Naipaul, Octavio Paz and Günter Grass

What is India? Can we understand it? Such questions demand multiple ways of answers and yet, the entire gamut of these answers, in spite of their lucid descriptions and narratives, may fail to define India satisfactorily nor help us understand the country in all its totality. If the case so be, how is it that a set of transnational travellers’ and writers’ stories and travel accounts become authentic in defining a nation? What are the underpinnings of this authenticity that legitimizes these discourses? While answering these vital questions, the book explores certain ways of perceiving the Indian subcontinent by a set of concepts and beliefs shaped by a host of travellers and opinion makers in their narratives that often end up in confirming to the stereotypical image of India. The work cuts across history, politics, and their relentless impact on the production of a body of knowledge and literature that has been conveying a prejudiced account of the Indian subcontinent to the community of readers across the globe.