Texts Histories Geographies is a critical reading of trends, texts and authors belonging to the broad field of Indian literature from a theoretically informed perspective. The essays constituting the volume interrogate, both directly and by implication, the canonical views on the categories of ‘India’, ‘literature’ and ‘Indian literature’, and the book can be said to represent a critical attitude that has till recently been admitted only into the periphery of literary debates. Consideration of Indian literature from a self-consciously non-dominant position is what the book attempts by raising questions about politics, theory, history, genealogy, location, culture and translation with reference to Indian literature. Though literary and cultural texts from several languages are used for this purpose, the central argument has been elaborated with the support of texts and authors from two specific literatures: Indian English literature and Malayalam literature.

The topics that are discussed in the book include issues concerning modernity, nationalism, colonialism, textuality, historicity, identity and diaspora. For this the work draws upon a broad range of writing by such authors as Raja Rao, Jayanta Mahapatra, Shashi Deshpande, Kamala Das, Mahasweta Devi, OV Vijayan, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Arundhati Roy, CV Raman Pillai, Kumaran Asan, MT Vasudevan Nair and Ayyappa Paniker.