In this strikingly original work, Francesca Orsini challenges many of the terms of current postcolonial and world literary debates. Her probing account of the rich multilingual complexity of North Indian culture moves beyond the binaries of center and periphery, cosmopolitanism and localism, and beyond the unities enshrined in terms such as 'the world,' 'the vernacular,' and even 'literature' itself. Both deeply grounded and genuinely ground-breaking, this book should be read by anyone interested in thinking freshly about the worldliness of local cultures.
Francesca Orsini is Professor Emerita of Hindi and South Asian Literature at SOAS, University of London. After earning an undergraduate degree in Hindi at Venice University and living in Delhi, she completed her PhD at SOAS. She taught at the University of Cambridge and SOAS and held visiting positions at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard, and is a Fellow of the British Academy, a regional editor of the Murty Classical Library of India, and an editor of the Cambridge Studies in World Literature series.