Globalization and Gender, continued...
This was the public lecture that I gave during my Fulbright tenure at San Diego State University, California, U.S.A. in the Fall of 2011

 In fact, a widely held criticism of Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy is that she knew how to package Indian exotica in English, so that   her book  The God of Small Things sold a   million copies. I do not agree with this position. Roy’s book has an originality and a language texturing that really designate it as a brilliant piece of artistry.  Arundhati has demonstrated what earlier Indian novelist in English, Raja Rao, demanded English in Indian hands must do, i.e., infuse “the tempo of Indian life….even as the tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of theirs.”  I would also like to stress that all three women write novels because the novel is perhaps the global genre. And in spite of the loss of the concept of nation in contemporary times it is important to remember Timothy Brenan’s  essay, “The National Longing for Form”, at this point:

 It was the novel that historically accompanied the rise of nations by objectifying the “one, yet many” of national life,…But it did more than that. It’s manner of presentation allowed people to imagine the special community that was the nation .³