For more than forty years, Shashi Deshpande has-as a novelist, short story writer, essayist, memoirist, and public figure (in short, as a concerned and engaged citizen)-audibly contributed to the lively public debates on the role of the writer and writing in India and to an understanding of India's contemporary social, literary, and political issues. She has not been reluctant to insert critical and dissenting notes into the public discourse of her nation. We are reminded constantly by the essays collected here that Deshpande is, first and foremost, a reader and a listener, actively and compassionately engaged in dialogue with others. The present collection invites its readers to enter that fascinating dialogue.

Shashi Deshpande is the author of eleven novels, two crime novellas, a number of short-story collections, a book of essays, and four children's books. Three of her novels have received awards, most notably the Sahitya Akademi award for That Long Silence. She has translated works from Kannada and Marathi into English, and her own work has been translated into various Indian and European languages. She has participated in literary conferences and festivals, as well as lectured at universities, both in India and abroad. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2009. Her memoir, Listen to Me, was published by Context in 2019.

Best known as a fiction writer, having published over a dozen novels and several collections of short stories, as well as a recent memoir, Shashi Deshpande is also a prolific non-fiction writer and one of India's most important intellectual voices. Her interests, expressed in dozens of essays published in newspapers and journals, range from observations on her own writing and that of others, to the state of literary criticism in India, and, importantly, to the state of India itself. Deshpande's long career has been devoted, in particular, to drawing attention to the status of women in India and to the status of Indian women writers. As the title of this collection indicates, Shashi Deshpande has never been afraid to intervene critically in the important political and literary controversies of her time, such as the perennial debate over the status of Indian Writing in English, even as she has sought to remind her readers of the infinite possibilities for a more equitable, just, and inclusive India.

It has been eighteen years since the publication of Deshpande's first collection of essays, Writing from the Margin and Other Essays. Since those essays were collected, she has published dozens more essays and reviews and given many public addresses, of which only a selection appear in the current volume. In compiling these essays for publication, we have considered both their ability to shed light on current times and their significance in terms of documenting the perspectives and attitudes of one of India's most important and celebrated writers.

The essays are presented in five sections, assembled thematically around the author's recurring concerns: the role and identity of the writer; women, writing, and empowerment; writers, readers, critics, and reviewers; texts and genres; and places recalled and writers remembered. Many of these essays have been previously published, and some of them have been updated during the editing process for the purposes of currency and brevity. It is appropriate-and entirely characteristic of Shashi Deshpande's humility and generosity-that the collection concludes with a reflection on the importance of Professor P. Lal to Deshpande's career, and to the career of so many other writers in India.

For more than forty years, Shashi Deshpande has-as a novelist, short story writer, essayist, memoirist, and public figure (in short, as a concerned and engaged citizen)-audibly contributed to the lively public debates on the role of the writer and writing in India and to an understanding of India's contemporary social, literary, and political issues. She has not been reluctant to insert critical and dissenting notes into the public discourse of her nation. We are reminded constantly by the essays collected here that Deshpande is, first and foremost, a reader and a listener, actively and compassionately engaged in dialogue with others. The present collection invites its readers to enter that fascinating dialogue.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages