Jews and Jewishness loom large in the contemporary South Asian cultural imaginary, both on the subcontinent, and in the diaspora. Along with less canonical authors, Writing Indians and Jews examines many of South Asia's most celebrated and best known contemporary writers working in English - Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Amitav Ghosh - who have placed Jewish characters and themes at the center of recent works. Anna Guttman argues that the work of Indian Jewish writers complicates the fields of postcolonial studies and her investigations make an important contribution to the study of contemporary South Asian and diasporic literature, and understandings of anti-Semitism, religious fundamentalism, and globalization.

This book discusses selected works by six contemporary Indian novelists writing in English - Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Nayantara Sahgal, Arundhati Roy, Ruchir Joshi and Rupa Bajwa - all of whom have made the Indian nation a central theme in their fiction. All these writers respond, in varying ways, to the idea of India as united in diversity, a construct most readily associated with the nationalist vision of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister. In considering India's past and looking towards the future, they struggle with and attempt to extend the available language of cultural diversity.

Writing Indians and Jews examines discursive practices surrounding the representation of Jews and Jewishness in Indian literature in English. These investigations make an important contribution to the study of contemporary South Asian and diasporic literature, and understandings of anti-Semitism, religious fundamentalism, and globalization.

This book investigates representations of the nation of India as characterized by unity and diversity in the works of six contemporary novelists, linking their work to important political, historical and theoretical writings.