The Shadow Lines is a highly innovative, complex and celebrated novel of Amitav Ghosh. Published in 1988, it received the prestigious Sahitya Academy Award in the following year. Not only literary critics but also some noted litterateurs have acclaimed it for what it has been able to achieve as a work of art. Its focus is a fact of history, the post-partition scenario of violence; but its overall form is a subtle interweaving of fact, fiction and reminiscence. It is a novel in which Amitav Ghosh has been able to realise his artistic conception through an art form, which is cohesive. However, it remains somewhat inaccessible to some readers; they are, particularly, mystified by its non-linear mode. This volume of critical essays on The Shadow Lines is being presented in the hope that it will enable the reader to gain an insight into the meaning and structure of the novel. In the first part of the book, the contributors bring out the various aspects/elements of the novel. The second part has essays, which look at the novel from some current critical perspectives — feminist, post-colonial and historicist — but the emphasis of these essays is upon practice and not theory. The idea is that the reader learns about a specific approach by seeing it applied to the The Shadow Lines. The third part has a single but significant essay ‘The Shadow Lines in Context’ which relates the novel to Ghosh’s other works, both fiction and non-fiction. Though the book is primarily addressed to the student, it is hoped that it will interest the common discernible reader as well.

Table of Contents:
Part One— 1. The Shadow Lines as a Memory Novel–Manjula Saxena; 2. The Narrator and the Chronicling of Self in The Shadow Lines–Premindha Bannerjee; 3. Interrogating the Nation, Growing Global in The Shadow Lines–Someshwar Sati; 4. Nation as Identity in The Shadow Lines–Alka Kumar; 5. The Shadow Lines between Freedom and Violence–Alpana Neogy; 6. Time and Space in The Shadow Lines–Arvind Chowdhary; 7. Tha’mma My Grandmother: Imaging the Elderly in The Shadow Lines–Roopali Sircar; 8. Imagery in The Shadow Lines–Rita Joshi; 9. ‘Going Away’ and ‘Coming Home’: The Shadow Lines and the Travel Motif in Children’s Fiction–Nivedita Sen—Part Two—10. Nationalism and the Question of Freedom in The Shadow Lines: A Gender Perspective–Meenakshi Malhotra; 11. Lines and Their Shadows: A Reading of Gender Roles in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines–Angelie Multani; 12. A Post-colonial Interpretation of The Shadow Lines–Promilla Garg; 13. Violence in The Shadow Lines: Nationalist Rhetoric and Historical Silence–Rudrashish Chakraborty; 14. The Bengalee in The Shadow Lines–Minoti Chatterjee—Part Three—15. The Shadow Lines in Context–Aditya Bhattacharjea; Chronology in The Shadow Lines –Arvind Chowdhary; A Family Tree: Indian Characters